After being stranded in space for eight months, NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore finally embarked on their first joint spacewalk outside the International Space Station.
Indian-origin astronaut and Commander Sunita Williams, along with fellow astronaut Barry Wilmore, ventured outside the International Space Station on Thursday to carry out maintenance work. As part of their tasks, they also wiped the station’s exterior to check for any surviving microbes from Earth.
“Here we go,” Mr Wilmore remarked as he exited the station, 420 kilometres above Earth, in a video livestreamed by NASA on X.
See the video here:
LIVE: @NASA_Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are taking a spacewalk to maintain @Space_Station hardware and collect samples. Today’s spacewalk is scheduled to start at 8am ET (1300 UTC) and go for about 6.5 hours. https://t.co/6pvzcwPdgs
— NASA (@NASA) January 30, 2025
NASA on Wednesday said it was working with billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX to safely return the astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who are for months struck at International Space Station (ISS), back home “as soon as practical.” The development came a day after US President Donald Trump said that SpaceX would “soon” begin a mission to repatriate the two American astronauts.
“NASA and SpaceX are expeditiously working to safely return the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore as soon as practical, while also preparing for the launch of Crew-10 to complete a handover between expeditions,” the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said in a post on X.
Veteran astronauts Wilmore and Williams arrived at the ISS in June 2024 aboard Boeing’s Starliner. They were due to spend only eight days on the orbiting laboratory, but technical problems on the spacecraft prompted NASA to change plans. The US space agency announced in August that Boeing rival SpaceX would bring the crew home in February. But their return was further postponed due to SpaceX preparing a new spacecraft.