Sunita Williams closes hatches to leave space station

Tue, 18 March 2025

10:13

After being stranded for over nine months, NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore are set to undock from the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday and begin their 17-hour journey back to Earth.

Wilmore, Williams and two other astronauts are poised to undock from the ISS at 10:30 am on Wednesday and are scheduled to splash down in the Gulf of America at 3:30 am on Thursday.

The astronaut crew is scheduled to travel back to Earth alongside Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.

As Nasa went live, Nick Hague, Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov were seen packing up and closing the hatches as Crew9 prepares to depart from the Space Station.

"It's been a privilege to call the Space Station home, to play my part in its 25-year legacy of doing research for humanity, and to work with colleagues, now friends, from around the globe. My spaceflight career, like most, is full of the unexpected," said Nick Hague.

NASA will provide live coverage of the agency's SpaceX Crew-9 return to Earth from the International Space Station, beginning with Dragon spacecraft hatch closure preparations at 10:45 pm EDT on Monday. NASA and SpaceX met on Sunday to assess weather and splashdown conditions off Florida's coast for the return of the agency's Crew-9 mission from the International Space Station.

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