Astronauts Butch and Suni will have to 'adapt' to being back on Earth, British reserve astronaut says

Record ID: 1984613

  • Title: Astronauts Butch and Suni will have to 'adapt' to being back on Earth, British reserve astronaut says
  • Date: 19th March 2025
  • Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (MARCH 19, 2025) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) RESERVE ASTRONAUT, MEGANNE CHRISTIAN, SAYING: "It is always amazing to see astronauts splashed down after their long missions, but this one is particularly special because, you know, Butch and Suni have been there for nine months and they were originally only going to be there for eight days.
  • Embargoed:
  • Keywords: EXPLORATION NASA SPACE SPACEX US USA
  • Location: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM / OFF THE COAST OF FLORIDA, UNITED STATES
  • City: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM / OFF THE COAST OF FLORIDA, UNITED STATES
  • Country: UK
  • Topics: Europe,Science,Space Exploration
  • Reuters ID: LVA002999719032025RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Astronauts that returned to Earth after a drawn-out mission in space will have to adapt to being back on Earth, reserve astronaut Meganne Christian said on Wednesday (March 19).
    NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams returned to Earth in a SpaceX capsule on Tuesday (March 18) with a soft splashdown off Florida's coast, nine months after their faulty Boeing Starliner craft upended what was to be a week-long stay on the International Space Station.
    Their return caps a protracted space mission that was fraught with uncertainty and technical troubles, turning a rare instance of NASA's contingency planning - and the latest failures of Starliner - into a global and political spectacle.
    "It's still a big difference going from that weightlessness to suddenly being under gravity again. So they have to adapt to that both physically and mentally. So that will be under direct medical supervision for a couple of weeks," Christian told Reuters.
    Swept up in NASA's routine astronaut rotation schedule, Wilmore and Williams worked on roughly 150 science experiments aboard the station until their replacement crew launched last week.
    The pair logged 286 days in space on the mission - longer than the average six-month ISS mission length, but far short of U.S. record holder Frank Rubio, whose 371 days in space ending in 2023 were the unexpected result of a coolant leak on a Russian spacecraft.
    (Production: Vitalii Yalahuzian)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2025. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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