Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams safely splashed down to Earth in a SpaceX capsule
NASA’s ‘stranded’ astronauts have finally returned back to Earth. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams splashed down off the coast of Florida on Tuesday (March 18) after an unexpected nine months on the International Space Station (ISS).
The astronauts launched into space on June 5, 2024 on a Boeing Starliner for what was meant to be an eight-day mission, but problems with the spacecraft meant they were ‘stuck’ on the ISS for months.
Butch and Suni returned to Earth alongside NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov in a SpaceX Dragon capsule in a landing that Senior NASA administrator Joel Montalbano described as “beautiful”.
The capsule splashed down off the coast of Florida at around 6pm local time (10pm UK time), where the astronauts and recovery team were greeted by dolphins swimming nearby.
NASA has revealed the next step for the ‘stranded’ astronauts after they complete medical assessments and debriefs. “The crew’s doing great…eventually they’ll make their way back to Houston,” said NASA manager Steve Stich, who told reporters the team will get some “well-deserved time off” with their families.
Both retired Navy captains, Wilmore and Williams said they did not mind spending more time in space. In the weeks before their departure, Butch revealed he and Suni had prepared for a longer stint on the ISS.
“We came up prepared to stay long, even though we plan to stay short. That’s what we do in human space flight. That’s what your nation’s human space flight programme is all about,” he said.
The pair launched in a Boeing Starliner that had never taken a crew to space before in a test designed to see how the new spacecraft performed.
“The astronauts have trained specifically for this. It’s not a case of, ‘Oh no we’re going to stay up here for another nine months, what are we going to do?’ This is meticulously planned,” explains Professor Damian Bailey, Editor-in-Chief of Experimental Physiology and a Professor of Physiology who specialises in space-related biomedical research.
Prof Bailey says the astronauts would have had a “phenomenal time”.
“If you ask every astronaut, without exception, that’s exactly what they want. It’s like going for a rollercoaster ride and having a fantastic time and then someone saying you can go again for free,” he adds.
The astronauts now face an intense rehabilitation programme to get them back to full health as the nine-month stay on the ISS has put the astronauts’ bodies under immense stress.
In a microgravity environment, their muscles and bones would have begun to waste away. This is because less force is exerted on muscles, meaning they don’t work as hard and atrophy over time. Bone tissue is also reabsorbed by the body, with bones becoming one per cent less dense for every month spent in space – if precautions aren’t taken to counter this loss, according to NASA.
This is why Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were carried out of the capsule on reclining stretchers. Experts warn that returning to ‘normal’ 1g gravity after a prolonged period in space can be painful and “miserable”.
“As a general rule of thumb – and it’s not the same for everybody – for every one day you spend in space, we’d expect you to spend one day recovering on Earth. Instead of a quick one or two week recovery, [the astronauts] have got lots of recovery ahead of them now,” explains Dr Kirsty Lindsay, Assistant Professor in Rehabilitation Sciences at Northumbria University, who specialises in space physiology.