India, March 18 -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi has written a letter to NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, inviting her to visit India as two astronauts stuck in orbit for nine months finally departed the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX capsule on Tuesday, kicking off their long-awaited voyage home.

Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, seated inside a Dragon capsule with two other crew members, undocked from the ISS at 1:05 a.m. New York time on Tuesday.

The capsule is expected to travel through space, plunge through the atmosphere and ultimately fall to Earth under parachutes before splashing down off the Florida coast around 6 p.m. local time.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Hindustan Times....