‘Ghar Wapsi’ for Sunita Williams soon? NASA-SpaceX launch Crew-10 mission

In a significant development, NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully launched a much-awaited crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, thus paving the way for the return of US astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who have been stranded on the ISS for nine months.

The Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a Dragon spacecraft on the Crew-10 mission, and a crew of four astronauts – Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov – lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The spacecraft will dock at the ISS on March 15, and once the four astronauts are acclimatised, they will take over the operations from Crew-9, which is set to depart on March 19, along with the veteran NASA astronauts.

The Crew-9 mission, launched in September last year, had only two astronauts – NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos’s Aleksandr Gorbunov - to keep two seats for Williams and Wilmore on their return. However, a replacement crew had to arrive to replace them before they could leave. Hence, the Crew-10 mission was assigned, but it was delayed multiple times due to technical issues and bad weather.

Wilmore and Williams were the first to fly Boeing Starliner capsule to the ISS in June last year. A spacecraft malfunction resulted in the eight-day mission being extended for months. The duo were set to return to earth in February, but it was delayed yet again.

Politics over Sunita Williams-Butch Wilmore return

The matter turned political after US president Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO and Trump’s adviser Elon Musk accused former president Joe Biden of “abandoning” Williams and Wilmore on the ISS intentionally, and that he rejected a plan to bring the duo back sooner.

Sunita Williams’s Indian connection

Williams has always been connected to her Indian roots. Born to Indian American neuroanatomist Deepak Pandya, who hails from Gujarat, and Bonnie Pandya, Williams was raised in the US, and is married to Michael J Williams, a federal marshal in Texas.

Interestingly, she carried the Bhagavad Gita and samosas to the ISS, and also celebrated Diwali there.