NASA astronauts return to Earth after 9-month space mission

Euronews

19-03-2025

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams returned to Earth on Tuesday, closing a saga that began with a bungled test flight more than nine months ago.
Their SpaceX capsule flew down into the Gulf of Mexico in the evening, a few hours after leaving the International Space Station, ending 286 days in space from what was supposed to be just a week-long mission due to problems with their Boeing Starliner capsule.
A replacement crew with NASA's Nick Hague and Russia's Alexander Gorbunov flew up on a SpaceX capsule last fall with two empty seats to bring Wilmore and Williams back to Earth.
'On behalf of SpaceX, welcome home,' radioed SpaceX Mission Control in California as the crew stepped out of the capsule.
'What a ride,' replied Hague, the capsule's commander. "I see a capsule full of grins ear to ear".
During their mission, Wilmore and Williams circled Earth 4,576 times and travelled 195 million kilometres by the time of splashdown. Williams even set a record on the flight for the woman with the most time spacewalking in their career.
Wilmore and Williams quickly transitioned from guests to full-fledged station crew members, conducting experiments, fixing equipment, and doing spacewalks together.
'This has been nine months in the making, and I couldn't be prouder of our team's versatility, our team's ability to adapt and really build for the future of human spaceflight,' NASA's commercial crew programme manager Steve Stich said.
Wilmore and Williams will have to wait until they're off the SpaceX recovery ship and flown to Houston before reuniting with their loved ones.
The three NASA astronauts will be checked out by flight surgeons as they adjust to gravity, officials said, and should be allowed to go home after a day or two.
The Starliner is still under an engineering investigation, according to the AP. So SpaceX will launch the next crew for NASA as soon as July.
The European Commission will decide whether to definitely scrap its planned liability rules for artificial intelligence systems by August, a Commission official told lawmakers in the European Parliament on Tuesday.
In the Commission's 2025 work program, presented in February, the EU executive said it plans to scrap the AI Liability Directive because 'no foreseeable agreement' is expected on the proposal.
The rules were intended to offer consumers a harmonised means of redress when they experience harm arising from AI products or services. They were proposed in 2022 but no significant progress has been made since.
The Commission indicated, however, that the file could stay on the table if the EU Parliament and Council undertake to do extensive work on it over the coming year.
The Commission official told the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) on Tuesday that it is waiting for the official views of both the Parliament and the member states and will then 'carefully think about the withdrawal'.
The file has not been officially withdrawn, but the Commission need to do this in six months, starting from the publication of the work program.
The Parliament itself is divided about the plans.
The lawmaker responsible for steering the AI Liability proposal through the parliament, German MEP Axel Voss of the Legal Affairs committee, said the Commission's move was a 'strategic mistake'.
The rapporteur in the IMCO committee, Kosma Złotowski (Poland/ECR), said in his draft opinion published in January that the 'adoption of an AI Liability Directive at this stage is premature and unnecessary.' The lawmakers in favour of withdrawing the rules say the consumers are protected by the Product Liability Rules as well as by the AI Act, which started to enter into force gradually.
EU Tech Commissioner Henna Virkkunen has been invited to the Legal Affairs committee on 9 April for a discussion on the topic.
Member states have not yet discussed the proposal to get rid of the rules at working party level.