After nine months arrested in the space, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams arrived home. The spacecraft where the two Americans returned to Earth landed near Florida coast around 6:57 pm on Tuesday, 18, with live broadcast from NASA, the United States Aerospacial Agency.
Their arrival was expected with anxiety. Astronauts were sent to the International Space Station (ISS) on an eight-day mission called Crew 9 in June 2024. But because of technical problems with Boeing’s Starliner, used to transport them, Butch and Suni had to stay in space for nine months.
Astronauts were brought to Earth with the help of Spacex, a company by billionaire Elon Musk. The Falcon 9 rocket, which took off from Florida on Friday, 14, with a Dragon capsule fixed on its top, carried a crew of four people on board to ISS.
The return trip began at the end of Monday night, 17, and lasted about 17 hours. NASA Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbumnov were also on board next to Butch and Suni.
The process of disabling and entry into the earth happened shortly after 6 pm and, for a few minutes, NASA lost communication with the spacecraft. The interruptions were treated as within normality.
NASA has transmitted the return since Monday night. In the early hours of Tuesday, 18, the agency made an interruption in supplying the images after the capsule used by crew separated from the International Space Station and returned with the availability of images at 5:45 pm moments before SplashDown, as the moment is called the water.
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It was expected that the Spacex Dragon Spacenavian would land around 6:57 pm Brasília time. Splashdown happened at the scheduled time. (Collaborated Rariane Costa)
