Sunita Williams: Indian-origin American astronaut Sunita Williams has been stuck in space since June. Along with him is another NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore. Both will be able to return to Earth in February next year. SpaceX Crew-9 mission has been successfully launched to pick up both the astronauts. Both will return through this spacecraft. The launch of the mission was successful, but there was a problem in the second stage of the Falcon-9 rocket, but it is not too troublesome and the return of Sunita and Butch Wilmore will not be affected much by it.
Explaining the technical problem, SpaceX said that after the successful launch of Crew-9, the second stage of Falcon 9 was launched into the sea as planned, but it suffered an off-nominal deorbit burn. Because of this, the second stage landed safely in the sea, but it landed outside the targeted area. NASA and SpaceX are finding the root cause of this and will conduct future launches after knowing this.
Despite problems with the second stage of Falcon-9, NASA officials are fully hopeful of the safe return of the astronauts. After the launch, NASA chief Bill Nelson said that we are in an exciting period of exploration. However, investigation into the Falcon-9 issue will be important as both agencies aim to ensure safety in future missions.
Let us tell you that Sunita and Wilmore had reached space in the first week of June, where both were to stay for a week, but both had gone in the Boeing Starliner spacecraft, which faced a technical problem. For this reason, more than 100 days have passed till now, but both of them are still in the International Space Station. NASA and SpaceX have jointly launched the Crew-9 mission, in which two astronauts are going and with this spacecraft, Sunita and Wilmore will return in February next year.
