Two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) for over nine months will finally return to Earth on Tuesday.
They will be brought back along with another American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.
Approximately 29 hours after launching from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday evening the Crew-10 astronauts' SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule successfully connected to the International Space Station (ISS) at 4:04 AM GMT on Sunday, March 16.
Video showed astronauts entering the ISS and greeting their fellow crew members with hugs while floating in zero gravity.
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The two astronauts were originally supposed to stay on the ISS for just eight days but due to technical problems with the spacecraft they arrived on, their mission was extended to over nine months.
NASA originally planned their return for Wednesday but moved it up to Tuesday at around 5:57 PM (21:57 GMT) due to good weather conditions for their ocean landing off the Florida coast.
The agency said in a statement, “The updated return target continues to allow the space station crew members time to complete handover duties while providing operational flexibility ahead of less favorable weather conditions expected for later in the week.”
The new Crew-10 team, expected to stay on the ISS for about six months, includes two Americans, Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, one Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and one Russian astronaut Kirill Peskov.
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