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A capsule made by Elon Musk’s Spacex entered the International Space Station early Sunday, giving a new crew to enable American astronauts Sunni Williams and Butch Wilmore to return to the ground after an eight -month mission that had to last eight days.
The Dragon capsule was dropped at 12.04am et, about 29 hours after starting from the NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, transporting four new crew members from SH.BA, Japan and Russia.
After the astronauts entered the ISS, Williams told Mission Control that it was “great to see our friends arrive”.
Williams and Wilmore, along with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexandr Gorbunov, are expected to go home on Wednesday after a delivery period. Until their return, there will be 11 crews at the space station.
According to NASA, Williams and the other three crew members had carried out 900 hours of research and more than 150 scientific experiments during their mission, including in kindergarten watering and exercises to keep astronauts fit into space.
Calling her to stay prolonged “a unique experience”, Williams has said she was missing looking at the weather changes and walking her dogs. “When I take them for a walk, sometimes it rains, sometimes it’s smelling, sometimes it’s hot. But I look forward to feeling all that weather on the ground, ”she said in a recent NASA interview.
The Hague and Gorbunov arrived at ISS in September at the Spacex Dragon Freedom Dragon, which will be used to bring Williams and Wilmore home.
The original plan was for the Boeing CST-100 Starliner that carried Williams and Wilmore at ISS in June to bring them home after their short mission.
But NASA decided in August that Starliner could not be used due to the problems of rising and flowing helium on the outside travel.
The decision was a humiliating obstacle to Boeing, raising questions about the company’s spatial ambitions at a time when its main trade aircraft operation was already under intensive regulatory pressure after last year’s middle hitting of a doors at a 737 Max.
Starliner intended to prove the company’s ability to operate in the new world of space procurement world, where the private sector, rather than NASA, owns rockets and hardware and sells cargo and crew services for the US Spatial Agency.
But as serial problems and delays left five years after the Spacex, analysts say Starliner has become a symbol of what has gone badly with Boeing Spatial Businesses.
Boeing has denied that the two American astronauts were “blocked” and insisted that the late return was not a failure.
