New Friends Arrive at the Space Station! ๐
Imagine waiting for your ride home, but it keeps getting delayed! That’s what happened to NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. They were supposed to be at the International Space Station (ISS) for just a week, but ended up staying for over nine months! ๐ฎ
Finally, on Sunday, their replacements arrived in a SpaceX crew capsule. The new team includes astronauts from the United States, Japan, and Russia. As they floated into the space station, everyone was super excited. One of the Russian astronauts even wore an alien mask for fun! ๐ฝ
Wilmore opened the hatch and rang the ship’s bell as each new astronaut entered. There were hugs, handshakes, and big smiles all around. “It was a wonderful day,” said Suni Williams. “Great to see our friends arrive.”
The reason Wilmore and Williams got stuck in space was because their original ride home, the Boeing Starliner capsule, had some problems. NASA decided to bring it back empty to fix it, so the astronauts had to wait for another ride. Luckily, SpaceX came to the rescue! ๐
Now, Wilmore and Williams are getting ready to come back to Earth. They’ll climb into the SpaceX capsule that’s been waiting at the ISS since last year. If everything goes well, they’ll undock from the station early Tuesday and splash down off the coast of Florida later that evening. ๐
Until then, the space station is a bit crowded with 11 people on board! But that’s okay because they’re all part of one big space family, working together high above our planet. ๐
Reference(s):
NASA's stuck astronauts welcome their newly arrived replacements
cgtn.com