Sunita Williams Set to Return Home After Extended ISS Stay
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Synopsis
Indian-descent American astronaut Sunita Williams is set to return to Earth this Tuesday after an extended stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS), marking the end of her prolonged mission.
Key Takeaways
- Sunita Williams is returning after a lengthy ISS stay.
- The Dragon spacecraft will splash down off Florida.
- Nasa is live-streaming the return of the astronauts.
- Delays in the return were attributed to technical issues.
- Elon Musk commented on the political reasons for the delay.
Washington, March 18 (NationPress) Indian-descent American astronaut Sunita “Suni” Williams is anticipated to return to Earth on Tuesday evening, concluding an unusually lengthy tenure aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
A spacecraft carrying Williams and three fellow astronauts will undock from the ISS shortly, with plans to splash down off the coast of Florida at 5:57 p.m. US Eastern time (approximately 3 a.m. Wednesday in India), as indicated by NASA.
The crew of the spacecraft, named Dragon, is set to undock from the ISS and secure the hatch at 11:15 p.m. US Eastern time (8:45 a.m. Tuesday in India).
NASA will provide a live stream of Dragon’s return, as part of its collaborative program with SpaceX, known as NASA’s SpaceX Crew 9 mission.
For both Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore, this marks the beginning of a journey they were meant to undertake 10 months ago after concluding their eight-day mission to the space station.
Their previous schedule faced delays due to technical issues, as reported by NASA.
Elon Musk, the owner of SpaceX, whose spacecraft is responsible for bringing back Williams and Wilmore, has claimed that the astronauts could have returned sooner with his assistance.
“They were left up there for political reasons, which is not good,” Musk commented during a recent Fox News interview alongside President Donald Trump.
Williams, who celebrated her 60th birthday in September, is the second American astronaut of Indian descent to gain international recognition. The first was Kalpana Chawla, who tragically lost her life in the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster.
Sunita Lyn Williams, born in 1965 to a father from Gujarat, Deepak Pandya, and a mother from Slovenia, Ursuline Bonnie Pandya (née Zalokar), made her inaugural trip to the ISS in 2006, aboard the space shuttle Discovery.
