Welcome Home, Astronauts

NASA's veteran astronauts, Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore have been rescued from international space station after 9 months.

Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore were launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on June 5, 2024, as part of the first crewed test flight of Boeing's Starliner.

The mission was initially planned to last eight days, but technical problems with the Starliner, including helium leaks and thruster issues, led to a significant delay in their return. As a result of the Starliner's issues, NASA decided to keep the astronauts on the ISS and bring the spacecraft back uncrewed.

Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore, along with Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov, returned to Earth aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on March 18, 2025, ending their nearly nine-month stay on the ISS.

How it become possible for the astronauts to survive for nine months when they were with the resources for eight days?

The International Space Station [ISS] moving in the Earth’s orbit was a collaborative project involving multiple countries, including the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan, and Europe aiming to provide home and research laboratory for astronauts and cosmonauts, moreover it ensure capacity of 7-14 members for accommodation and dock upto 8 space crafts at once. Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore survived on packaged and dehydrated food, recycled water and resources of space station.

In the mean time they conducted studies on plant growth in microgravity, the production of nutrients using engineered microbes, and assessing the impact of long-duration space stays on the human body. She also performed spacewalks, broke spacewalking records, and integrated seamlessly into the ISS crew, contributing to scientific research and maintenance task.