And They’re Back: Sunita Williams, Butch Wilmore Return To Earth As Crew 9 Makes Stunning Splashdown | Republic World

Florida: NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, part of the Crew 9 mission returned back to earth from the International Space Station (ISS) after a wait of 9 long months onboard SpaceX Dragon which made a successful textbook Splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday.

As soon as SpaceX Dragon carrying the Crew 9 members began its journey back to earth from ISS almost 17 hours ago, the spacecraft executed a series of departure burns to move away from the space station.

Completing its nearly 17 hours of journey back to earth, Dragon spacecraft performed a number of de-orbiting manoeuvres before re-entering Earth’s atmosphere including getting its trunk jettisoned and de-orbit burn down.

After the trunk jettisoned process, Dragon’s de-orbit burn was completed following which its nosecone was closed.

Post this process, the spacecraft went through the signal blackout period which lasted for a few minutes. Soon after the signal blackout phase, the Dragon was clearly visible entering the earth’s atmosphere above the Atlantic Ocean when its parachutes were deployed before it attempted a perfect splashdown off the coast of Florida near Tallahassee.

Giving a minute by minute update, NASA confirmed the stunning Splashdown of the Crew 9 and was getting ready for recovery ships, open the hatch process which took around 30-60 minutes.

The Dragon capsule was successfully recovered from the Atlantic waters and lifted off to a recovery vessel.

• Departure from International Space Station 
• Phasing Burns
• Trunk Jettison
• Deorbit Burn
• Re-entry
• Parachutes Deploy 
• Splashdown

After a picture perfect splashdown, the Crew-9 astronauts Nick Hague, Butch Wilmore, Sunita Williams, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov waved, smiled as they were recovered by the first response teams on Earth.

Almost 17 hours ago, Dragon autonomously undocked from the International Space Station. After performing a series of departure burns, it moved away from the space station and performed multiple orbit-lowering manoeuvres, jettison the trunk and re-entered Earth’s atmosphere for Splashdown off the coast of Florida.

Onboard the spacecraft were Crew-9 NASA astronauts including Nick Hague, Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. Out of these four, Williams and Wilmore were stuck in space for almost 9 months as the spacecraft which was supposed to fly them back had developed serious technical issues.

Hague and Gorbunov flew to the space station on Dragon when Falcon 9 launched the spacecraft from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on Saturday, September 28.