Ahmedabad (Gujarat) [India], March 16 (ANI): After spending over nine months aboard the International Space Station (ISS), NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams are preparing for their return to Earth.

Director of the Space Applications Centre (SAC), Nilesh M Desai explained the process behind their return.

'The crew mission is sent every 6 months under NASA's ISS program. So, the 10th crew mission has reached there now... They will return to Earth after over 9 months,' Desai said.

He highlighted the distinction between crew missions and cargo missions.

'NASA keeps sending cargo missions regularly... but it has no provision for bringing astronauts back. The provision is possible only in the case of a crew mission,' he said.

On Friday, SpaceX and NASA launched a mission to bring back US astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore from the ISS, where they have been stranded for nine months. The lift-off took place at 7:03 ET on Friday, with a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon spacecraft on the Crew-10 mission.

Earlier, SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov docked with International Space Station, Space X CEO Elon Musk announced on Sunday.

In a post on X, Musk posted, 'SpaceX Dragon docks with Space Station.'

In a statement, NASA stated, 'NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, as the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked to the orbiting complex at 12:04 a.m. EDT, while the station was roughly 260 statute miles over the Atlantic Ocean.'

Crew-10 will join the Expedition 72 crew of NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Don Petitt, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore and Roscosmos cosmonauts Aleksandr Gorbunov, Alexey Ovchinin, and Ivan Vagner, according to the statement released by NASA. The number of crew aboard the space station will rise to 11 people before Crew-9 members Hague, Williams, Wilmore, and Gorbunov return to Earth after the crew handover period. (ANI)