Indian-descent American astronaut Sunita Williams returned to Earth on Wednesday (IST), ending an unusually protracted stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
A spacecraft carrying Williams and three other astronauts landed off the coast of the American state of Florida around 5.57 pm US Eastern (around 3 am Wednesday in India), according to NASA.
NASA live-streamed the Dragon’s return, as part of its joint programme with SpaceX, called NASA’s SpaceX Crew 9 mission.
For Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore, this was a journey they were supposed to undertake 10 months ago at the end of their eight-day mission to the space station.
Their earlier schedule was delayed because of technical reasons, NASA has said.
Williams, who turned 60 in September, is the second India-descent American astronaut of international acclaim. The first was Kalpana Chawla. Just a few years older than Williams, Chawal died in the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster.
Sunita Lyn Williams, as she is called, was born in 1965 to a father from Gujarat — Deepak Pandya — and a mother from Slovenia, Ursuline Bonnie Pandya (née Zalokar).
Williams made her first trip to the International Space Station in 2006, aboard space shuttle Discovery.