On March 18, two astronauts finally left the International Space Station to make their comeback on Earth after nine months. They left at exactly 1:09 on March 18th and returned 17 hours later. The two astronauts landed in the water off Florida.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams left for the station on June 2024 and were supposed to be there for eight days. Unfortunately, there has been a big problem with their spaceship that forced them to stay on the station for more than 280 days.

Even if they were supposed to stay only eight days, they were prepared for the worst, so they had enough food and things to drink for the whole nine months. We were prepared to stay for a long time, even though we only expected to stay for a short time said Butch Wilmore.

Even though they were prepared to stay for longer in case of technical issues, it is still hard for their morale to be apart from their family for this long period. “The hardest part about the unexpected extended stay was the wait by our families back home,” said Suni Williams.

Suni and Butch were accompanied by the astronaut Nick Hague and the Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, for their come back on earth. These two astronauts left Earth on March 14, just to go get the two other unlucky people.

The NASA sent two people instead of four to go get Suni and Butch, since they had to keep some place if they wanted to bring them back. The spaceship that brought them back was owned by Elon Musk’s company.

The American president, Donald Trump, accused his predecessor, Joe Biden, of intentionally abandoning the astronauts on the station. His friend, Elon Musk, said that he could have saved them a long time ago, but he never said how he would have done that.

Some people might think that Suni and Butch have broken a record by staying for 280 days, but they are far from that. In 1990, Valeri Polyakov left for the station and came back only 400 days later. More recently, Frank Rubio stayed on the station for 371 days, also because of technical issues.