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====== aerodrome finance ======
NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore finally return home after more than nine months in space
[[https://aerdorne.org/|aerodrome finance]]
NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore — who gained international attention as their planned short stay in space stretched into a more than nine-month, politically fraught mission — are finally home.

Williams and Wilmore, alongside NASA’s Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, safely splashed down off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida at 5:57 p.m. ET Tuesday.

The crew’s highly anticipated return came after the crew climbed aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and departed the International Space Station at 1:05 a.m. ET Tuesday.

The quartet are part of the Crew-9 mission, a routine staff rotation jointly operated by NASA and SpaceX. The Crew-9 capsule launched to the space station in September with Hague and Gorbunov riding alongside two empty seats reserved for Williams and Wilmore, who had been on the orbiting laboratory since last June, when their original ride — a Boeing Starliner spacecraft — malfunctioned.

Safely reaching Earth concluded a trip that, for Williams and Wilmore, has garnered broad interest because of the unexpected nature of their extended stay in orbit and the dramatic turn of events that prevented them from returning home aboard the Boeing Starliner vehicle.

“Welcome home to the Crew-9 astronauts — NASA’s Nick Hague, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. Your dedication and unwavering commitment to space exploration inspires us all,” Boeing Space shared on social platform X after the crew returned home.

Last summer, NASA decided flying the two astronauts home aboard their Boeing Starliner capsule would be too risky, and the space agency opted to fold Williams and Wilmore into the International Space Station’s regular crew rotation. That call is why the pair flew home with Hague and Gorbunov on SpaceX’s Crew-9 capsule.

But the length of the duo’s stay in space is not record-breaking. Williams and Wilmore’s extended mission concluded after 286 days, which is still significantly shorter than the world record of 437 days in orbit held by the late Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov.

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