Today, NASA astronauts Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, Nick Hague, and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov returned to Earth thanks to the SpaceX Crew-9 mission. Williams and Wilmore made headlines when their original eight-day mission was extended to a remarkable 286 days.
Think about it. They arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on June 6, 2024, and just returned to Earth today. Just imagining that makes me shiver.
Hague and Gorbunov arrived at the station on September 29, 2024, so they’ve been up there for quite a while too. One thing is for sure: space travel has come a long way, and it’s remarkable how much access the public has to real-time information and videos thanks to modern technology.
Before going to bed last night, I watched part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 Undocking. Seeing these four astronauts sit patiently in their spacesuits with very little room to move their arms made me realize just how fortunate economy air travelers are—even if they’re stuck in the very last row of the plane with a seat that doesn’t recline.
After a 17-hour journey, the four astronauts re-entered Earth’s atmosphere around 5:45 p.m. ET. According to Reuters, “Using Earth’s atmosphere and two sets of parachutes, the craft slowed its orbital speed of roughly 17,000 miles per hour to a soft 17 miles per hour at splashdown.
You can watch the amazing coverage, including their splashdown off the coast of Florida near Tallahassee, in the video below. Once the parachutes deployed, the space capsule bobbed in the water like a cork until rescue boats arrived. They first tested for dangerous gases before hoisting the capsule onto a large ship, where the ground crew opened the side hatch.
As part of the standard procedure, the astronauts will be flown to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for several days of health checks before they can be reunited with their families. I didn’t realize how spending months in space can impact the human body in various ways, including muscle atrophy and potential vision impairment.
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What’s even cooler and something I missed while watching the live cast is a pod of dolphins swam up to the capsule to welcome the astronauts back to earth. See embedded video above.
