NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore have returned to Earth after a nine-month stay on the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. They were stranded on the ISS due to leaks and engine problems with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that took them there.
NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore have returned to Earth after a nine-month stay on the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. They were stranded on the ISS due to leaks and engine problems with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that took them there.
On March 18, Williams and Wilmore landed in the Gulf of Mexico in a SpaceX Dragon capsule after a 17-hour journey from the ISS, CNBC reports.
They will launch to the station in June 2024 in a mission that is crucial to Boeing’s bid to compete with SpaceX, which won the contract with SpaceX in 2014 to send astronauts to the ISS for NASA, with the goal of taking astronauts further into the solar system.
SpaceX made its first crewed flight with the Crew Dragon spacecraft in 2020, in the early days of the COVID pandemic. Meanwhile, Boeing’s Starliner project was derailed by cost overruns and delays.
The June 2024 launch was supposed to help Boeing put all that behind it. The goal was to send Williams and Wilmore to the ISS and then return them home after a brief stay there. But Starliner ran into problems before they even docked with the station, includinga small leak of helium gas. It’s used to fuel the engines used for maneuvering in space and slowing down as it reenters Earth’s atmosphere.
The leak was extremely small, and engineers believed it would not affect the mission, so they continued the launch. But four more helium leaks occurred during the mission, and five of the 28 maneuvering engines shut down during the approach to the space station, four of which were restarted.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were scheduled to return in February 2025 aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon. In December, NASA said the two astronauts would have to wait for another SpaceX rescue ship to arrive with a replacement crew «no earlier than the end of March.»
In February, Elon Musk, who owns SpaceX, accused former US President Joe Biden of leaving two astronauts aboard the International Space Station for «political reasons.»
«They were left there for political reasons, and that’s not good,» the billionaire said, sitting next to President Trump in a joint interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News Tuesday night. He added that he would expedite the astronauts’ return at the president’s request.
After former International Space Station commander and Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen disagreed with the billionaire on Twitter about the political motives behind Wilmore and Williams' return, Musk called the Dane «retarded» and «idiot» and called for the ISS to be decommissioned.
Musk has been criticized for this by prominent astronauts, including Scott Kelly, the brother of Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, a former U.S. Navy combat pilot with 25 years of experience and an astronaut who commanded the space shuttle. Kelly recently visited Ukraine for the third time, which for some reason did not please billionaire Elon Musk, who called him a «traitor.»
The astronauts themselves, Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, have denied claims that they were abandoned on the ISS, stressing that they do not feel abandoned or forgotten, and that their return is planned according to the approved schedule.
During their extended stay on the ISS, Wilmore and Williams became part of a regular rotation, conducting scientific experiments and routine maintenance, just like any other astronaut aboard the ISS.
Williams also completed a spacewalk, and said she was looking forward to returning home to see her family and two dogs. «It was a roller coaster ride for them, maybe a little more than it was for us,» Williams said.
