On Tuesday morning, NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams departed the International Space Station in a SpaceX capsule for a long-awaited trip back to Earth, nine months following their faulty Boeing Starliner craft upended what was to be a roughly week-long test mission.
The capsule aimed for a splashdown off the Florida coast by early evening, weather permitting. Wilmore and Williams are to be transported home with another American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon craft, which arrived at the ISS early on Sunday.
The duo have been on the ISS since June following the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they were testing on its maiden crewed voyage suffered propulsion issues and was deemed unfit to fly them back to Earth.
On Sunday evening, NASA said in a statement that it had moved forward the astronauts’ anticipated ocean splashdown off the Florida coast to approximately 5.57 p.m. Tuesday (2157 GMT).
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