WASHINGTON: NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams departed the International Space Station early on Tuesday morning in a SpaceX capsule for a long-awaited trip back to Earth, nine months after their faulty Boeing Starliner craft upended what was to be a roughly week-long test mission. Wilmore and Williams, two veteran NASA astronauts and retired US Navy test pilots, strapped inside their Crew Dragon spacecraft along with two other astronauts and undocked from the orbiting laboratory at 1.05 am ET (0505 GMT), embarking on a 17-hour trip to Earth.
The four-person crew, formally part of NASA's Crew-9 astronaut rotation mission, is scheduled for a splashdown off Florida's coast later on Tuesday at 5:57 pm ET. "Crew-9 is going home," said commander Nick Hague from inside the capsule as it slowly backed up and away from the station for what a NASA official described on the live webcast of the event as "the trip downhill." Hague said it was a privilege to "call the station home" as part of an international effort for the "benefit of humanity." The NASA official said the weather conditions for the splashdown were expected to be "pristine." — Reuters
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