NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who had been stranded in space for over nine months, are scheduled to return to Earth on Tuesday. The extension of their mission was a result of a malfunction in their Boeing Starliner spacecraft. They departed from the International Space Station in a SpaceX capsule on Tuesday morning, accompanied by two additional astronauts, American Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. The four-person crew, officially part of NASA’s Crew-9 astronaut rotation mission, undertook a 17-hour journey back to Earth and are expected to make a splashdown off Florida’s coast later on Tuesday. The prolonged stay of the astronauts in space has sparked a controversy, with former US President Donald Trump accusing Joe Biden of abandoning them for political reasons.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/nasa-astronauts-begin-return-to-earth-after-9-months-on-iss/a-71957481?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf