After more than nine months on the International Space Station, two Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams are a step closer to returning home.On Friday, a Falcon 9 rocket with a Crew Dragon fixed to its top, was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:03 pm (2303 GMT). It carried a team of four astronauts – NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov – headed for the space station. Key things to know:Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams stuck in space for more than 9 monthsButch Wilmore and Sunita Williams have been stuck aboard the orbital lab since June after 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.Instead, Starliner returned empty, without experiencing further major issues — and what was meant to have been a days-long roundtrip for Wilmore and Williams has now stretched past nine months.That is significantly longer than the standard ISS rotation for astronauts of roughly six months. But it is much shorter than the US space record of 371 days set by NASA astronaut Frank Rubio aboard the ISS in 2023, or the world record held by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 continuous days aboard the Mir space station.Still, the unexpected nature of their prolonged stay away from their families — they had to receive additional clothing and personal care items because they hadn’t packed enough — has garnered interest and sympathy.
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