PIONEER NEWS SERVICE
Closing an unplanned odyssey that began with a flawed test flight last spring, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams returned to Earth, hitching a different ride back home. This brought relief to all across the world who had been expectantly waiting for their arrival safe and sound. According to NASA sources, their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico in the early evening, just hours after departing the International Space Station, adding that the splashdown occurred off the coast of Tallahassee in the Florida Panhandle. It took them an hour to climb out of their capsule, waving and smiling at the cameras after which they were hustled away in reclining stretchers for routine medical checks.
Wilmore and Williams ended up spending 286 days in space — 278 days longer than anticipated when they had launched. They circled Earth 4,576 times and travelled 121 million miles (195 million kilometers) by the time of splashdown.
“On behalf of SpaceX, welcome home,” radioed SpaceX Mission Control in California.
