Now that a SpaceX crew has made it to the International Space Station, what’s next for the stranded astronauts?
After months stuck aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are just days away from embarking on their trip back home. The two astronauts have been patiently awaiting the replacement crew after the ship they arrived in experienced technical issues that prevented them from using it to return to Earth.
Initially, Wilmore and Williams were only supposed to depart for an eight-day mission. However, after NASA deemed their Starliner craft unsafe, the astronauts have been stuck in space for nine months and counting.
Over the coming days, the new replacement crew, U.S. military pilots Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, alongside former airline pilots Takuya Onishi of Japan and Kirill Peskov of Russia, will learn about the ISS. Once the four new members have been onboarded, Wilmore and Williams will take a well-earned trip back home to Earth in their SpaceX capsule.
Unsurprisingly, Wilmore and Williams were elated when the doors opened to welcome the replacement astronauts, exchanging hugs and handshakes with the new crew.
“It was a wonderful day. Great to see our friends arrive,” Williams told Mission Control, per Newsweek.
For their part, the new crew was excited to be aboard.
“Hi everybody down there on Earth. Crew-10 has had a great journey up here, about 28 hours to get back up to the space station. And I cannot tell you the immense joy of our crew when we looked out the window and saw the space station for the first time. You can hardly even put it into words … orbiting the Earth for the last couple of days, it has been absolutely incredible,” said McClain, per The Guardian.
Wilmore and Williams will leave the space station sometime after March 19, depending on the weather. Their space capsule is expected to splash down off the Florida coast.