SpaceX capsule launched to bring back Stranded Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, docks at Space Station
Washington: NASA has sent a new SpaceX Capsule to the International Space Station to bring back the two stranded astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore to earth.
The Butch Wilmore carrying the crew that will ferry back two has docked with the orbiting laboratory on Sunday.
The Crew-9 mission was sent on a Dragon spacecraft in the Falcon 9 rocket, that was launched at 1:17 pm (1717 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Saturday. The Dragon spacecraft made contact with the ISS at 5:30 pm Sunday.
After docking was completed, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov boarded the station just after 7:00 pm, embracing their floating colleagues on the space station.
“What a fabulous day it was today,” NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy said at a news conference.
When Hague and Gorbunov return from the space station in February, they will bring back two space veterans — Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — whose stay on the ISS was prolonged for months due to problems with their Boeing-designed Starliner spacecraft.
In total, Hague and Gorbunov will spend some five months on the ISS; and Wilmore and Williams, eight months.
In all, Crew-9 will conduct some 200 scientific experiments.