According to Xinhua news, the US space exploration technology company "Dragon" spacecraft carries astronauts, including the American astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who are stranded in the international space station due to the failure of the "starliner" spacecraft, and detached from the international space station in the early morning of the east time of the US on March 18, departed to return to the earth.
NASA's live screen showed the "Dragon" spacecraft in the US at 1:05 am Eastern Time on March 18 (1:05 pm, March 18, Beijing time) from the space station to depart for home. The spacecraft is scheduled to land (splashdown) on Florida's coast at 5:57 pm Eastern Time on March 18 (5:57 pm, March 19, Beijing Time).
When NASA's "Crew-10" of two American astronauts, a Japanese cosmonaut and a Russian cosmonaut aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked at the International Space Station (ISS) early Sunday morning (March 16), they were greeted by Russian astronaut Ivan Vagner, wearing an alien mask.
Williams and Wilmore have been stuck in space since last June due to technical problems of Boeing's Starliner which took them to the ISS.
According to the People, after living in microgravity for nearly nine months, Suni Williams, 59 years old, said that even the most basic task of walking will be a challenge when she returns to Earth. I've been here for a long time, and now I'm trying to remember how to walk," she said in a phone conversation with students at her alma mater. "I haven't sat down, I haven't laid down. I haven't had to, I just close my eyes and float in place".
The Daily Mail reports that astronauts who are exposed to microgravity for long periods of time usually suffer from muscle loss, bone loss, and imbalance when they return to Earth. This time, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were stranded nearly 35 times longer than expected, and pulmonary specialist and retired Air Force medic Dr. Vinay Gupta assessed that the two astronauts would need at least six weeks of rigorous rehabilitation to return to normal.
In addition to muscular and skeletal effects, the astronauts also experienced extreme levels of space radiation, with NASA research suggesting that one week on the ISS exposes the human body to the same amount of radiation as one year on Earth, which can increase the risk of cancer, central nervous system damage, bone loss and cardiovascular disease.
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