NASA Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams got their first taste of fresh air in 286 days when the hatch of their SpaceX Crew Dragon Capsule Freedom was opened by recovery crews off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida at 6:38 p.m. on March 18.
They returned home 278 days later than expected, after their test flight of the Boeing CST-100 Starliner capsule to the International Space Station (ISS) became a one-way trip after the capsule was deemed unsafe to return in.
All four crew members were pulled from the Dragon onto the deck of the SpaceX recovery ship Megan, smiling and waving, with Wilmore and Williams coming out just after 6:50 p.m. They were immediately taken on a stretcher to the SpaceX flight surgeon, which is standard return procedure for all long-duration Dragon and Soyuz missions.
Less than an hour earlier, Dragon Freedom safely splashed down into the calm blue waters of the Gulf of America, carrying not just Wilmore and Williams but their fellow members of SpaceX Crew-9: NASA Astronaut Nick Hauge, Crew-9 commander, and Roscosmos Cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
That splashdown, occurring at approximately 5:57 p.m., marked the end of a journey home which began with a departure from the ISS just after 1 a.m.
Final descent began around 5:11 p.m. as their capsule turned itself around and fired its engine for a re-entry burn, slowing itself to a point where it was pulled out of orbit and began re-entering the atmosphere.
Dragon is designed to perform an autonomous re-entry.
Commander Hague’s voice broke routine radio silence, letting SpaceX mission control know he and his crew were “enjoying the ride,” as video from a high-altitude aircraft showed the first images of Freedom coming back to the earth as a plasma trail streaked behind.
At 5:54 p.m., Cheers erupted as drogue parachutes deployed, followed shortly by the main parachutes, slowing the spacecraft from more than 370 mph down to 16 mph.
“What a ride,” Hague said. “The capsule’s full of grins, ear to ear.”
Once checked out by the flight surgeon, the crew will take a helicopter from the ship to an airport where they will catch a flight back to Houston, Texas, and the Johnson Space Center.
Hague and Gorbunov launched to the ISS aboard Dragon Freedom as the original members of Crew-9, bringing with them the seats and spacesuits that Wilmore and Williams needed to get home. Hague and Gorbunov had their own mission objectives to accomplish on the station.
They returned home with Wilmore and Williams after 171 days in space.
Crew-9’s splashdown was the last a SpaceX Crew Dragon would do off the coast of Florida, as NASA officials announced that all future splashdowns occurring off the coast of southern California beginning with the return of Crew-10 this summer.
Crew Dragon is the fourth type of spacecraft Williams and Wilmore have flown in their careers, coming after the Space Shuttle, Russian Soyuz, and the Boeing Starliner.
William returns home with 608 days in space now under her belt, according to NASA officials, making her the second-most days in space of any NASA astronaut, following Peggy Whitson, who still holds the record of 675 cumulative days in space.
Williams set the record for female spacewalking, and now ranks 4th overall, coming home with nine career spacewalks now, totaling 62 hours and 6 minutes of time outside.
Williams also served as the commander of the ISS after getting reassigned to the Expedition 72 mission with Wilmore after the Starliner capsule was deemed unsafe for re-entry. Their original mission was extended from a little more than a week to 286 days, beginning with the tail end of Expedition 71.
NASA officials denied the idea that they were stuck or stranded on the space station.
“First principle in space flight, you always have a way to come home, and Butch and Suni have had a way to come home,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program at Kennedy Space Center, told members of the press during a Crew-10 post-launch press conference, who said that the return on Crew-9 was one of several opportunities the agency had to bring them home.
Due to the demands of space station maintenance and ongoing experiments, Wilmore and Williams had to continue to man the orbiting outpost until they could be relieved from the Crew-10 mission.
“Every astronaut that launches into space, we teach them: ‘Don’t think about when you’re coming home. Think about how well your mission is going, and if you’re lucky, you might get to stay longer,’” said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of the Space Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
NASA officials also added that there were no extraordinary concerns for the returning astronauts despite the unexpected extended stay.
“Like any astronauts coming back, there’s a reclamation period, and so that'll vary by crew member, and also does vary by how long they’ve been on orbit, sometimes,” said Dina Contella, deputy manager of NASA’s ISS Program.
