Sunita Williams a step closer to home as NASA launches return craft

Sunita Williams has been stranded on the International Space Station for nine months. Pic/Instagram@astronaut.sunitalynwilliams

After a brief setback on Thursday, astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore can now look forward returning home soon after nine long months of being stranded on the International Space Station (ISS). NASA and billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX on Friday launched the Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a Dragon spacecraft on the Crew-10 mission, from the Kennedy Space Center.

According to NASA, the two stranded astronauts are scheduled to return to Earth a few days after the Crew-10 launch. The mission was briefly delayed on Thursday due to a hydraulic system issue with a ground support clamp arm.

Williams and Wilmore have been stuck aboard the ISS since June last year due to a Boeing Starliner spacecraft malfunction. The astronauts were to return home in February next year, but even that was delayed.

What began as a technical failure spiralled into a political flashpoint, as US President Donald Trump and his close advisor, Musk have repeatedly suggested - to great outrage - that former president Joe Biden "abandoned" the pair intentionally and rejected a plan to bring them back sooner.

The duo's return plan has been unchanged since they were reassigned to SpaceX's Crew-9, which arrived in September aboard another Dragon carrying only two crew members - instead of the usual four - to make room for Mr Wilmore and Ms Williams.

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