CNN
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The inaugural crew of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft left Earth for the International Space Station with two test pilots for the flight — NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore — under the impression that their journey would last only a week.
A few months later, NASA decided to return Williams and Wilmore home aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule after determining that technical problems with the Starliner on the first leg of their journey posed too much risk.
But that doesn’t mean astronauts will get the first flight back to Earth.
A SpaceX Crew Dragon, dubbed Crew-8, left the International Space Station on Wednesday, but Williams and Wilmore were left behind again for the simple reason that they weren’t assigned to that particular spacecraft.
Notably, the four astronauts assigned to Crew-8’s mission — NASA’s Matthew Dominique, Michael Barrett and Jeanette Epps, and Alexander Grebenkin of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos — had been on the ISS since March 5, about three months. Williams and Wilmore.
That’s because the Crew-8 crew was part of a regular crew rotation at the orbiting lab, and regular missions typically last six months.
The crew disembarked from the ISS on Wednesday afternoon and headed for a splashdown on the Florida coast. It happened Friday at 3:29 a.m. ET.
Meanwhile, Williams and Willmore are assigned to return home on SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission.
NASA and SpaceX had to reconfigure the Crew-9 capsule and astronauts ahead of its Sept. 28 launch to ensure Williams and Wilmore had enough space to return home after completing their ISS mission by February 2025.
This is one of the reasons why neither of them could go on the next ride home. Space travel can be much more complicated — and requires advance planning — than that.
Here’s how Williams and Wilmore wound up
Williams and Wilmore did not go to the ISS as part of a normal crew rotation.
Instead, the pair entered orbit as part of a historic endeavor: the first crewed flight of the Starliner. They left on June 4, mostly without their own toilets and other personal amenities, expecting to return to Earth immediately.
Williams and Willmore were beset by a number of critical issues, including gas leaks and thruster problems that plagued their Starliner capsule during the first leg of its journey. NASA later chose to leave the capsule — along with Williams and Willmore — on the ISS while engineers worked to figure out what went wrong.
After weeks of uncertainty, NASA made the call at the end of August that it was too dangerous to send Williams and Wilmore home aboard the Starliner.
The space agency scrambled to find an alternative route home. NASA decided to add Williams and Willmore to Crew-9, which at the time had not yet left Earth.
The two astronauts scheduled to fly on Crew-9 before the Boeing Starliner failure — NASA’s Jeana Cartman and Stephanie Wilson — had to be jettisoned to accommodate Williams and Wilmore on the return trip.
The Crew-9 mission launched with two astronauts, two empty seats and a few balls — or deadweight — to balance the physics of flying without a full crew of four. The Crew-9 spacecraft docked with the ISS on September 29.
Williams and Wilmore have now been on the space station for more than 18 weeks.
And Boeing’s Starliner finally returned home empty on September 6.
What exactly will Williams and Wilmore do with another four or five months in space?
When the pair arrived at the ISS, they were guests. But now, they are called Expedition 72 or The International team Astronauts currently serving as official employees of the space station.
Williams too He took over as commander Full space station on September 22.
NASA has seamlessly integrated with the team, taking over day-to-day tasks at the orbiting laboratory.
As part of Crew-9 and the regular mission, Williams and Wilmore will carry out routine crew duties, including conducting spacewalks outside the space station, maintaining the orbiting laboratory and carrying out a tight schedule of science experiments.
NASA previously confirmed that Starliner astronauts are ready for such a transition.
“A few years ago, we made a decision — knowing that this was a test flight — to make sure we had the right resources, materials and training for the crew if they had to stay on the ISS, for whatever reason, for an extended period of time,” said the International Space Station during the Aug. 7 conference. said Dana Weigel, NASA’s manager of the station program.
“Butch and Suni are fully trained,” Weigel added. “They are capable and current in EVA (space walks), robotics, all the things we need them to do.”
During NASA’s latest update on ISS operations, Williams, Willmore and their crew, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Alexander Korbunov of Russia, will help move their Crew-9 capsule from its current docking port to an open port, the space agency said. 8 started its journey from outer space. According to updates from NASA, they recently spent some time training for that mission.
Williams and Wilmore had recently experienced some downtime as they waited several days to support the departure of Crew-8, which had been repeatedly delayed by bad weather around Florida.
But the couple is also busy with tests and other daily duties. An October 18 Upgrade From NASA, for example, it says that during a half-day of work, Williams took a cognitive test and “verified connections on radio frequency identification hardware,” while “Wilmore was a Fluorescent microscope Notice how there are particles of different sizes Gel and coarse.”
Williams and Wilmore had already logged a total of 500 days in space before the Starliner test flight this year. Williams said she cried after leaving the space station following her last mission in 2012, unsure if she would ever return.
“This flight is a dream come true for her,” said a NASA commentator during the Starliner’s live broadcast on June 5. launch.
It’s not uncommon for astronauts to unexpectedly extend their stay on the space station — by days, weeks or even months.
NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, for example, is scheduled to spend about six months aboard the International Space Station for his inaugural mission to low-Earth orbit, which begins in September 2022. Instead he logged 371 days in space after discovering a coolant leak. Comes from his original ride — a Russian Soyuz capsule — when docked to the orbital outpost.
Rubio’s one-year tenure set the American record for most days spent in orbit.
Astronauts routinely extend their stays on the station for days or weeks at a time for a variety of factors, including poor Earth weather or other schedule adjustments.
Asked at a September news conference if he had trouble adjusting to the prospect of waiting months to go home, Wilmore said, “I’m not going to worry about it. I mean, there’s no benefit to it. So my transition — maybe it wasn’t immediate — but it was pretty close.”
Williams said at the same news conference that she misses her family and pets and is disappointed to miss some family events this fall and winter. But, this is my happy place. I love being here in space. It’s funny. You know, every day you do something like work, quote, quote, and you can reverse it. You can do it sideways, so it adds a little different perspective.
