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Watch: Pods of dolphins gather around SpaceX Capsule to welcome Sunita Williams, 3 other astronauts
NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore returned to Earth after spending more than nine months at the International Space Station (ISS)
A pod of dolphins gathered curiously around SpaceX's Dragon Freedom capsule as it landed off the Florida coast with NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, whose nine-month-long space overstay at the International Space Station (ISS) finally came to an end.
‘Butch and Suni’ were accompanied by astronauts Nick Hague and Aleksandr Grebyonkin, who reached the ISS in December as part of a rescue mission planned by NASA and SpaceX.
NASA's commentary did not fail to describe the moment dolphins approached the SpaceX capsule in curiosity as the recovery team members approached the astronauts in a speed boat.
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What did Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore achieve in space?
Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore spent 286 days on the International Space Station, where they conducted over 4500 orbits and travelled more than 121 million statute miles.
The duo spent 286 days in space — 278 days longer than anticipated when they launched. They circled Earth 4,576 times and travelled 121 million miles (195 million kilometres) by the time of splashdown.
Sunita Williams, capping her third spaceflight, will have tallied 608 cumulative days in space, the second most for any US astronaut after Peggy Whitson's 675 days. Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko set the world record last year at 878 cumulative days.
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The politics
Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore travelled to the ISS in June last year for a scheduled eight-day mission. They were forced to stay as the Boeing Starliner capsule developed issues with its propulsion system during its maiden test flight. The faulty capsule returned to Earth last September.
The rescue mission gained political overtones after Donald Trump assumed power at The White House on January 20. The US president said he was assigning SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to assist NASA in bringing back the stranded duo.
Trump and Musk alleged, without evidence, that the Biden administration did not rescue ‘Butch and Suni’ for political purposes. Musk had offered no specifics, and NASA's fundamental plan for the astronauts' return has remained unchanged since their Crew-9 reassignment, AFP reported
During a post-mission press conference, Steve Stich, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager, confirmed that there had been no discussions about deploying a relief crew sooner -- and that the most recent scheduling delays were due to SpaceX's own scheduling adjustments.
