A group of dolphins gave a spectacular welcome this Tuesday to NASA astronauts Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore and Sunita ‘Suni’ Williams upon their arrival on planet Earth, along with their colleagues Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov, after being stranded in space for nine months.
The mammals surrounded the SpaceX Dragon capsule during its splashdown, which occurred at 21:57 GMT off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida.
Drone images showed how the playful dolphins swam in circles around the capsule, giving a magical welcome to the astronauts after they were rescued by a replacement mission.
“Splashdown confirmed! Crew 9 is back on Earth in their SpaceX Dragon spacecraft,” wrote SpaceX with a video showing the exact moment when the capsule touched down in the waters off the coast of Florida.
“Wow, we have a beautiful and small pod of dolphins, it wasn’t just one or two‚” said Kate Tice, engineering manager at SpaceX, while commenting on the company’s video feed, as reported by The New York Times.
Curious dolphins and the end of the odyssey of the astronauts stranded in space
Dolphins are known for being curious and playful animals. That’s why it’s not surprising that they surrounded the capsule and splashed the astronauts while they waited to be picked up.
There is no precise information on what type of dolphins they were, but Todd Speakman, a field biologist from the National Marine Mammal Foundation, told The New York Times that they were probably Stenella dolphins, which are usually found in the Gulf Coast of Florida. “They are curious animals, so they will come to see it,” he said, highlighting that they usually always surround boats.
Others claim they could be bottlenose dolphins, which are common in this area of the Florida coast.
The truth is that the dolphins gave the astronauts a beautiful moment, who departed last year with the plan for a one-week journey, but ended up spending 286 days in space due to unforeseen circumstances. They orbited the Earth 4,576 times and traveled 195 million kilometers (121 million miles) until the moment of splashdown.
“On behalf of SpaceX, welcome home,” transmitted the SpaceX Mission Control in California.
The descent of the astronauts was calculated very meticulously. The capsule had to withstand temperatures of 2000 °C during its entry into Earth’s atmosphere. Once in the water off the coast of Florida, they were picked up half an hour later by a SpaceX team.