NASA astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Butch Wilmore are weeks away from coming home after an unplanned nine-month sojourn on the International Space Station (ISS). The duo, originally scheduled for a brief visit, were trapped in a series of delays that extended their mission way beyond expectations.
Wilmore and Williams flew aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule in June, the spacecraft’s crew debut. The Starliner, however, encountered several technical problems that made it impossible for it to safely reach the ISS, prompting NASA to return it without any crew on board. This incident caused a delay in the return of the astronauts as they had to wait for their replacement capsule, the SpaceX Dragon, to be prepared.
The homecoming of the astronauts was again put on hold when the SpaceX capsule took more completion time. With their replacements arriving next week on a SpaceX ship, Wilmore and Williams will at last be heading home. They will have some company on their way home from astronauts who launched individually in September, and two seats on the return trip are available.
During a news conference on Tuesday, Wilmore said that though there were political tensions regarding the postponement, the adjustment in their return schedule was strictly logistical and unaffected by political pressure. But Williams protested Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, regarding his recent announcement of retiring ISS within two years instead of a wait until the NASA-planned deorbit by 2031. Williams asserted the critical science experiments carried out on the space station, termed it “amazing,” and urged it to be premature in retiring its mission.
For Williams, the biggest test of the prolonged stay was the toll on their families’ emotions. She shared how she could hardly wait to return to her Labrador retrievers, while Wilmore further mentioned that despite the lengthy mission, they were still healthy and dedicated to the mission.
The astronauts will don generic SpaceX flight suits on return since the mission was unscheduled. The astronauts, however, are in high spirits, with Williams stating, “We’re just Butch and Suni. Everybody knows who we are by now.”
