"Doing Yagna for her return," says Dinesh Rawal, Sunita Williams' cousin in Gujarat

Ahmedabad (Gujarat) [India], March 18 (ANI): As National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronaut Sunita Williams is set to return home after nine months on the International Space Station, Dinesh Rawal, Sunita Williams cousin brother in Gujarat, expressed his happiness and said that she is the pride of the nation.
"Everyone in the family, including her mother, brother and sister, is happy that she is coming back home. Our entire family is delighted and eagerly awaits her return... We have started offering prayers and visited many temples for her safety... It is a huge day for us... She is the pride of the nation... We are doing a 'Yagna' for her return and will distribute sweets upon her return," Rawal told ANI.
NASA's Boeing Starliner astronauts Sunita 'Suni' Williams and Barry 'Butch' Wilmore, along with two others, have undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) and are scheduled to splash down on Earth Tuesday evening.
NASA will provide live coverage of the SpaceX Crew-9 'Dragon Freedom' capsule carrying the four astronauts back to Earth from the International Space Station. Williams and Wilmore are accompanying SpaceX Crew 9 astronaut Nick Hague and Russian astronaut Alexander Gorbunov.
Willams and Wilmore had launched to the ISS on June 5 on a Boeing Starliner spacecraft, then stayed aboard the ISS after it developed technical issues. In September 2024, NASA sent the Starliner craft back to Earth, uncrewed, to free up the docking port for other spacecraft.
Now, after nine months Williams and Wilmore are set to return to Earth on the capsule of the Elon-Musk owned Space X.
NASA posted the development on X, "They're on their way! Crew 9 undocked from the Space Station at 1.05 am ET (0505 UTC). Reentry and splashdown coverage begin on X, YouTube, and NASA+ at 4.45 pm ET (2145 UTC) this evening."
Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, alongside Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, began their 17-hour journey back to Earth aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.
As NASA went live, Nick Hague, Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov were seen packing up and closing the hatches as Crew9 prepared to depart from the Space Station.
"It's been a privilege to call the Space Station home, to play my part in its 25-year legacy of doing research for humanity, and to work with colleagues, now friends, from around the globe. My spaceflight career, like most, is full of the unexpected," said Nick Hague.
The launch came after US President Donald Trump urged Elon Musk to rescue the stranded astronauts sooner than NASA had planned. He has repeatedly accused former US President Joe Biden of abandoning them in space.
Wilmore and Williams have been stranded on the ISS for nine months after reaching there in June last year. They were supposed to stay there for about a week. The astronauts were transported from Earth to the ISS aboard Boeing's Starliner spacecraft.
However, the spacecraft came back to Earth unmanned in September. This came after NASA and Boeing identified "helium leaks and experienced issues with the spacecraft reaction control thrusters" on June 6 as Starliner approached the space station. (ANI)