‘Butch and Suni’ astronauts prepare for Tuesday homecoming after nine-month mission
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, two veteran NASA astronauts who have been stuck on the International Space Station for nine months, are scheduled to begin their return to Earth early on Tuesday morning on a long-awaited flight home to cap an unusual mission.
After a replacement crew arrived on the space station Saturday night, Wilmore, Williams and two other astronauts are poised to undock from the ISS at 1:05 a.m. ET (0505 GMT) Tuesday to begin a 17-hour trip back to Earth.
The space station departure is the start of a highly anticipated end to the drawn-out saga of “Butch and Suni”, who had been part of a key test mission with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft that went wrong last year. The mission was initially expected to last eight days.
A Crew Dragon capsule from Elon Musk’s SpaceX will be their ride home, part of a contingency plan devised by NASA last year.
– Reuters
