US astronaut Suni Williams and her colleague Barry Wilmore have begun their return journey to Earth after more than nine months on the International Space Station. They were only supposed to stay on the ISS for a few days, but due to technical problems with their Boeing Starliner spacecraft, they were unable to return and instead had to wait for months. Most recently, the new US government even turned their return flight into a political issue and pushed it forward by a few days. At the same time, US President Donald Trump claimed that his predecessor Joe Biden had abandoned the pair on the ISS.

Williams and Wilmore were the first people to fly to the ISS in the Starliner at the beginning of June. However, due to issues, Boeing's spacecraft was unable to fly them back and had to return to Earth empty. Instead, NASA sent only two space travelers to the ISS with a Crew Dragon from Boeing's competitor SpaceX at the end of September. Two seats on board remained free for Williams and Wilmore. The two were not stranded, but were working on the ISS and waiting for the scheduled return flight of their space capsule. It was only because the launch of the next SpaceX space capsule was delayed that their departure was postponed by a few weeks.

Last weekend, the four-member Crew 10 then arrived at the ISS with a Crew Dragon: Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers from NASA, Takuya Onishi from Japan and the Russian Kirill Peskov. They have now stayed behind with the American Don Pettit and the two Russian cosmonauts Alexei Ovchinin and Ivan Wagner. Williams and Wilmore left together with Nick Hague from NASA and Alexander Gorbunov from Russia. They are due to dock in the sea off the coast of the US state of Florida at around 11 p.m. German time. NASA intends to accompany their return with an audio feed, and there will be another live stream shortly before their arrival.

(mho)