After nine months in space, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are returning to Earth aboard a SpaceX capsule, set to splash down off Florida. Originally planned as an eight-day mission, their stay on the ISS was extended due to spacecraft issues. Dr Meganne Christian, the UK's ESA Reserve Astronaut, said re-adapting to gravity and social interaction will be challenging after months in microgravity. Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00Sunny and Butch are on their way home from the International Space Station and it's a
00:03very controlled sort of return and it's all based on the window for when they can splash
00:08down and that's to do with things like the weather and when there are permissions available
00:11to splash down.
00:13So they'll do some orbits around the Earth and then when the moment is right they'll
00:16enter the Earth's atmosphere and the capsule will start burning and then the parachutes
00:23will open and they will splash down in the ocean.
00:26Butch and Sunny originally went up for what was supposed to be a few days but it was a
00:31test flight.
00:32They knew that things could change.
00:33They probably didn't expect it to be nine months but they knew that it could be different
00:38and in fact they did train for a full six month mission.
00:41They even trained for potential extra vehicle activity or spacewalks that they might be
00:45able to do during that time so they were well prepared for it and they had done each two
00:50missions beforehand as well.
00:52When astronauts return to Earth it's a hugely different sensation to what they've been experiencing
00:57for the past six or nine months in this case and it's mainly because of the difference
01:03in gravity.
01:04So they've been in microgravity, zero gravity, weightlessness for the past nine months and
01:09then suddenly they're back down on Earth getting that 1G again and it's a bit like having a
01:15whole pile of things on top of you.
01:18So it's really a matter of adapting to that difference and that's both physical and mental.
01:24They've been used to having the same seven people on the station for the past few months
01:27and so just getting used to having lots of people around again, that's quite an adaptation
01:33too.