Months after being stuck in space, NASA Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore are all set to return to Earth. For the unversed, Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore were sent to space in June 2024 for an eight days mission. However, due to unexpected propulsion issues in their Boeing Starliner, Williams and Wilmore were stranded at the International Space Station (ISS) for more than nine months! After much delay, the news is that Williams and Wilmore have been undocked from the ISS today (March 18) and they have started their return journey back to Earth. NASA shared that Crew-9 undocked at 10:35 AM (IST) on March 18, posting a video of the spacecraft detaching from the space station.
However, Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore are not alone in their journey back to Earth. As per reports, a Dragon spacecraft was sent to ISS in September 2024 with a two-member crew- NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, instead of four which are usually sent. After much delay, a Dragon spacecraft finally docked at the ISS on Sunday (March 16). The undocking is now over and the spacecraft is now on its way back home along with four astronauts, namely: Sunita Williams, Butch Wilmore, NASA’s Nick Hague, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
Read on to know more about the two astronauts– Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov– who are bringing Sunita Williams and Butch Willmore back to Earth:
NASA’s Nick Hague
In 2013, Colonel Nick Hague was selected as a NASA astronaut. Hague obtained a Bachelor of Science in Astronautical Engineering degree from the United States Air Force Academy in 1998, followed by a Master of Science in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2000, as per reports.
In July 2015, he completed his astronaut candidate training and in 2018, he was sent on his first mission to the ISS. However, back then he and his crewmate– Alexey Ovchinin from Roscosmos– had faced a major rocket booster malfunction due to which their Soyuz MS-10 launch was aborted.
This is astronaut Nick Hague’s second mission to the ISS as the commander of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission. He was sent to ISS along with his crewmate Aleksandr Gorbunov with the mission to bring back Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore back to Earth.
Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov
Aleksandr Vladimirovish Gorbunov is a Russian Cosmonaut and an aerospace engineer who is travelling along with Nick Hague, as per reports. Gorbunov is a native of Zheleznogorsk, and he has an engineering degree from the Moscow Aviation Institute, as per Wikipedia.
This is the Roscosmos cosmonaut’s first space flight.
Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, along with NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov are expected to land at the Florida coast, USA around 3:27 AM IST on March 19 (Wednesday) after a 17 hours long journey.
