00:00They're going to miss me.
00:02After around 270 days stranded in space, it's almost time for American astronauts Sonny
00:08Williams and Butch Wilmore to come home.
00:12Back in June last year, Williams and Wilmore thought they were heading to the International
00:16Space Station for an eight-day mission.
00:20But the Boeing-manufactured Starliner capsule they were testing suffered technical difficulties
00:25and returned to Earth empty.
00:28Seven months later, they'll finally be returning home aboard one of Elon Musk's SpaceX Dragon
00:34capsules.
00:35The saga has put focus on NASA's decision to rely on private companies.
00:41For more than a decade, the American Space Agency used Russian Soyuz rockets to ferry
00:46astronauts to and from the space station after the US phased out its costly, ill-fated space
00:53shuttle programme.
00:55In 2010, NASA awarded a $3 billion contract to SpaceX and a $4.8 billion contract to Boeing
01:03to design and construct capsules as well as rockets, saying at the time that this could
01:08save up to $30 billion.
01:11A decade later and the SpaceX programme is up and running, while Boeing, whose commercial
01:15airline business has been plagued by problems, still appears to be having teething problems
01:21with its space mission.
01:22And Sonny Williams and Butch Wilmore have become emblems of that failure.
01:27NASA recently released a video in a bid to show their extra time in space was not wasted.
01:33We're constantly doing experiments, we're constantly collecting data, we're constantly
01:38trying to answer questions and usually that leads to more questions.
01:42The focus of the question though is, what happens when you take gravity away?
01:47We've had opportunities to do all sorts of science, spacewalks.
01:52Varied and pretty awesome, actually, opportunity to do something different every single day.
01:58A new crew is due to take off to swap with Williams and Wilmore on a SpaceX rocket on
02:03March the 12th.
02:04Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin will take over command of the space station.
02:10They're going to miss me.
02:11All right, hey, just wanted to say thank you to everybody, to next commander Alexey, thank
02:20you for your, and I promise you, we are actively trying to find the passage back to the place
02:31we were before.
02:33And with that, I will give you the kluch.
02:44Very soon you will leave station.
02:49It was great flying, walking, relaxing together.
02:57I wish you good luck, nominal descent, soft landing and all the best.
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