The two test pilots of the inaugural crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft – Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore from NASA – left Earth towards the International Space Station (ISS) with the impression that the trip would only last a week.
Months later, after determining that the technical problems faced by Starliner on the first leg of the trip posed too great a risk for them to embark again, NASA decided to fly Williams and Wilmore back home aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.
But that doesn’t mean astronauts would take the first flight back to Earth.
A SpaceX Crew Dragon, on a mission called Crew-8, left the International Space Station on Wednesday, but Williams and Wilmore will be left behind once again for the simple reason that they were not assigned to go on that spacecraft. specific.
The four astronauts assigned to the Crew-8 mission – NASA’s Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, and Alexander Grebenkin from the Russian space agency Roscosmos – have been on the ISS since March 5, about three months longer than Williams. and Wilmore.
This is because the Crew-8 team is part of a regular crew rotation at the orbiting laboratory, and routine missions typically last about six months.
The team boarded the ISS on Wednesday afternoon and is heading to the coast of Florida, scheduled to arrive on Friday (25) at 4:30 am (Brasília time), according to NASA.
Meanwhile, Williams and Wilmore are assigned to return home aboard SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission.
NASA and SpaceX had to reconfigure the Crew-9 capsule and astronaut assignments before the mission’s Sept. 28 launch to ensure there would be enough room for Williams and Wilmore to return home aboard the vehicle when it completed its mission in ISS, at the latest in February 2025.
That’s just one of the reasons the pair can’t just embark on their next trip home. Spaceflight tends to be more complex — and requires more advance planning — than that.
How Williams and Wilmore Ended Up Here
Williams and Wilmore did not go to the ISS as part of a normal crew rotation.
Instead, the pair ventured into orbit as part of a historic effort: the first crewed Starliner flight. They left on June 4, without even taking their own toiletries and other personal comforts, hoping for a quick return to Earth.
Williams and Wilmore were then left in limbo after several crucial problems, including gas leaks and thruster problems, plagued their Starliner capsule during the first leg of their journey. NASA then chose to leave the capsule — along with Williams and Wilmore — on the ISS while engineers worked to figure out what went wrong.
After weeks of uncertainty, NASA decided in late August that it would be too risky to return Williams and Wilmore home aboard Starliner.
And the space agency scrambled to find an alternative route home. This is how NASA reached the decision to place Williams and Wilmore on Crew-9, a mission that at the time had not yet left Earth.
Two astronauts who were scheduled to fly on Crew-9 before the Boeing Starliner disaster — NASA’s Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson — had to be removed to make room for Williams and Wilmore on the return trip.
The Crew-9 mission launched with just two astronauts, two empty seats and some dead weight to balance the physics of flying without a full crew of four. The Crew-9 spacecraft arrived at the ISS on September 29th.
Williams and Wilmore, for the record, have been on the space station for nearly five months.
And Boeing’s Starliner finally returned completely empty on September 6.
How astronauts spend their time
So what exactly would Williams and Wilmore do for another four or five months in space?
When the pair arrived at the ISS, they were guests. But now, they’re on the job, having joined Expedition 72, or the international crew of astronauts that currently serves as the official Space Station crew.
Williams even took command of the Space Station on September 22.
NASA said the two integrated perfectly into the group, taking on daily tasks aboard the orbiting laboratory.
As part of Crew-9 and the formal expedition, Williams and Wilmore will take on typical crew work, including conducting spacewalks outside the space station, maintaining the orbiting laboratory, and running a tight schedule of scientific experiments.
And NASA previously confirmed that Starliner astronauts were prepared to make such a change.
“A few years ago, we made the decision — knowing this was a test flight — to ensure we had the right resources, supplies and training for the crew, just in case they needed to stay on the ISS, for any reason, for a period of time. longer period of time,” said Dana Weigel, NASA’s International Space Station Program Manager, during an Aug. 7 briefing.
“Butch and Suni are fully trained,” Weigel added. “They are capable and up to date with EVA (spacewalks), with robotics, with all the things we need them to do.”
During recent updates on NASA’s ISS activities, the space agency said that Williams, Wilmore and their crewmates, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian Aleksandr Gorbunov, will help move its Crew-9 capsule from its current port of call. docking for the port that was opened when Crew-8 began its journey back from space. They recently spent some time training for this task, according to updates from NASA.
Williams and Wilmore have also had some downtime lately as they waited days to support Crew-8’s departure, which was postponed several times by bad weather in Florida.
But the pair also kept busy with experiments and other daily tasks. An Oct. 18 update from NASA, for example, states that during a half-day of work, Williams took a cognition test and “checked connections in radiofrequency identification hardware,” while “Wilmore turned on a fluorescence microscope to observe how particles of different sizes gel and thicken.”
Williams and Wilmore had already logged a combined total of 500 days in space before launching the Starliner test flight this year. Williams even said she cried after leaving the Space Station following her last mission in 2012, not knowing if she would return.
“This flight is a dream for her,” said a NASA commentator during a live broadcast of the Starliner launch on June 5.
Extended stays in space
It’s not uncommon for astronauts to unexpectedly extend their stay aboard the Space Station — by days, weeks or even months.
NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, for example, was scheduled to spend about six months aboard the International Space Station for his maiden voyage to low-Earth orbit, which began in September 2022. Instead, he logged 371 days in the space after discovering a leak coming from its original spacecraft — a Russian Soyuz capsule — while it was docked at the orbiting outpost.
Rubio’s year-long stay ended up setting a U.S. record for the most continuous days spent in orbit.
Astronauts also often extend their station stays by days or weeks due to a variety of factors, including bad weather on Earth or other schedule adjustments.
When asked at a press conference in September if he had trouble adjusting to the prospect of waiting months longer to return home, Wilmore said, “I’m not going to worry about it. I mean, there’s no benefit to it. So my transition was — maybe it wasn’t instantaneous — but it was pretty close.”
Williams said at the same news briefing that she missed her family and pets and was disappointed to miss some family events this fall and winter.
But, she added, “This is my happy place. I love being here in space. It’s just fun. You know, every day you do something that is work, in quotes, you can do it upside down. You can do it sideways, so it adds a little bit of a different perspective.”
This content originally appeared on Why didn’t the Starliner astronauts return on this week’s SpaceX mission? on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
Charles Grill is a tech-savvy writer with over 3 years of experience in the field. He writes on a variety of technology-related topics and has a strong focus on the latest advancements in the industry. He is connected with several online news websites and is currently contributing to a technology-focused platform.
