Stranded NASA astronauts return to Earth

We begin today’s programme with the long-awaited return of astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to Earth. The pair had been stranded on the International Space Station for nine months. Let’s hear a bit of their descent back to the Florida coast…

NASA COMMS 1 - All hooks are open

NASA COMMS 2 - All hooks are open, and undocking confirmed. Freedom is free of it's moorings. Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore begin their belated trip home.

ISS COMMS - ISS thrusters are verified. Crew 9, safe journey home. It's been the honour of a lifetime to cross your paths up here on the space station. Your service has been very much appreciated, and safe journey home.

NASA COMMS 3 - And splashdown. Crew 9, back on Earth.

Wonderful narration of Butch and Suni’s return to Earth. We’re going to get a quick word now from the space scientist and author, David Whitehouse; that’s a wonderful conclusion to it all, isn’t it; but what is the story behind this story?

David - You're right, this is a remarkable conclusion to an incredible episode in the exploration of space. There's hardly been anything like it before. Butch and Suni were going up last year for an eight-day mission to check out the Boeing Starliner capsule, which is on paper a very able and capable capsule designed to work alongside Elon Musk's Dragon capsules to take people to and from the space station. But they had problems with it when they were docking the thrusters, the insulation, and it was deemed unsafe to bring them back. Although it did return in an uncrewed mode, it left Butch and Suni on the space station with problems as to how long they're going to stay and how they would fit into the natural rotation of crews going up and down. And they had to transition from being a visitor to being a long-term space station crew member and await their ride home, which we've just seen has been actually, I should say, among the most spectacular, sharp, high-definition close-up images and video of coming home I've ever seen.

Chris - One thing that wasn't entirely clear to me was why there was a problem getting them home and why their eight-day stay turned into more than eight months in space. Why couldn't they just send another spacecraft? Or there are spacecraft going all the time to the International Space Station, aren't there? Couldn't they just make some space on one of those and bring them home sooner? What was the holdup?

David - There were several problems. First of all, I think Butch and Suni were not unhappy that they were spending longer in space, because these were their last missions. They'd been on the space station before. And as a finale to your space career, seeing more sunsets and actually being in space is what astronauts do. They were not heartbroken not to be coming back quick, although the time did drag on, I think, towards the end. The problem is there is a regular schedule of spacecraft going up and down. There are only a number of docking ports that you can use. Part of those capsules are Russian, part of them are American. In order to keep the crew rotated, keep rookies coming up for their experience in the space station, which has only got a few years left, they didn't really fit in for several months. Now, there is a bit of an argument going on that Elon Musk said he could have sent a capsule up to bring them back in September or October. But the Biden administration and NASA didn't want them to do that because it would have handed a political goal to Donald Trump. It didn't happen. They had to wait for a dragon capsule. And there were complications in the sense that their spacesuits that they wore inside the Starliner were not compatible with them coming home on a dragon capsule. So they had to have new spacesuits designed and built down on the ground and then taken up and then tested. So one thing or another, it was easiest to bring them back at this time. And this was a decision to bring them back now that was actually made before Trump was elected.

Chris - What's the nature of that return journey? When you've been, what is the trip back like and how long does it take, etc?

David - Depends upon how you come back. In an emergency, if you come back in a Soyuz, you can actually be back on the ground within an hour and a half, having pressed just one button. But in order to make the return in the dragon capsule a little easier and to bring it down in the, well, the Gulf of Mexico, I don't know what I'm supposed to call it these days, off Tallahassee, Florida, they had to stay in space for 18 hours after they had undocked to do various orbital maneuvers and check out the spacecraft and things like that. But really, the return is very automatic. People know when to fire the rocket motors, in which direction, for how long, how the speed is going to be slowed down. And testimony to that is that when the dragon capsule came down to splash down, SpaceX was already able to put a drone almost exactly in front of it to watch it come down. And the pictures were incredibly remarkable and testimony to the accuracy at which this process can take place. But of course, getting back is one thing. It takes a while to adapt to being in zero gravity when you go up there. Then after nine or ten months of that, to come back and within half an hour be hit by full Earth gravity for the first time in almost a year, that is another thing entirely. That is tough.

Chris - Apart from that, which is going to take a bit of rehabilitation, isn't it, for them to get their strength back, etc. What have they said or what have been the reactions of the two of them?

David - They're very glad. Suni is glad to be back home. She's missing her dogs, evidently. They haven't issued any public statements since they've got back, but they have said how happy they are to be back and how their bodies feel like concrete when they're trying to move around. Their first night back must be very difficult in Earth gravity on a proper bed. So we've yet to hear from them in a press conference. They have weeks of rehabilitation ahead of them and constant monitoring for the rest of their life because of the exposure to radiation they've had in space. So we'll hear their story and I bet there are publishers out there who are desperate to get hold of the publishing rights for Butch and Suni's own story of their prolonged stay in space. We'll hear about it soon.

Chris - You've written a few space science books in your time, haven't you? So I suppose that in fact it might not just be publishers, it might be Hollywood that comes knocking as well. It's got Armageddon Mark II and that kind of thing written all over it, hasn't it? It's a great story.

David - I don't know if Suni and Butch have got agents. If they haven't, they should have because they have experienced one of the most extraordinary episodes in space exploration, which has got politics, spaceflight, it's got technical details, it's got so many interesting things. And yes, books, Netflix videos, documentaries. These astronauts think they're retiring.

Chris - Go on, say it David. The sky's the limit.