After a long 9 months, a SpaceX spacecraft has finally arrived at the International Space Station to bring back stranded Sunita Williams and her fellow astronaut Barry Butch Wilmore. It took an hour for the spacecraft’s doors to open after arriving at the station on Sunday morning. The BBC and NASA reported this.
Earlier, the rocket left on Friday local time. This Crew-10 mission is the long-awaited first step in bringing the astronaut pair back to Earth. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:03 pm with four astronauts. They are Anne McClain, Nicole Ayers, Japanese Space Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. They will replace Williams and Wilmore.
The spacecraft will bring back Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams and her partner Butch Wilmore to Earth. They have been stuck in space for the past 9 months.
According to NASA sources, the doors of the spacecraft did not open even after reaching their destination. First, some safety and external pressure checks had to be done. It took an hour. After that, the four people came out.
NASA astronauts Sunita and Butcher have been on the International Space Station since June last year. They went there for just an eight-day space mission; but due to a malfunction in Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, they were stuck at the space station. Although they were supposed to return to Earth in February, it was postponed.
NASA has said that the two astronauts who were stuck after the start of the Crew-10 mission can return to Earth within a few days.