by After more than nine months on board the international space station, two astronauts will finally leave Earth early Tuesday and end a longer mission that fascinated global attention.
Butch Wilmore and Sununi Williams flew to the orbital laboratory in June last year to be a daily round trip to try Boeing’s Starliner on his first crew flight.
However, the spaceship developed drive problems and was not suitable to fly it back, but returned empty without major problems.
Ex-navy pilot Wilmore and Williams (62 and 59) were instead facing the NASA-Space crew 9 mission, in which a dragon spaceship last September with a team of two, instead of the usual four, for the “stranded” couple too crooked.
Then, in the early Sunday, an auxiliary team called Crew-10 put on the station, and their arrival hit a broad smile and hug when they hovered through the hatch.
The arrival of Crew-10 is the way for Wilmore and Williams, together with the American Nick Haag and the Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
The slip lock is set for 10:45 p.m. (0245 GMT), followed by final checks and down at 1:05 a.m.
If everything goes smoothly, the dragon craft will use its parachutes off the coast of Florida for an Ocean Splashdown, where a recovery ship picks up the crew.
– ‘Incredible resistance’ –
The stay of Wilmore and Williams exceeds the standard ISS rotation with six months, but only occupies sixth place under the US records for a single mission period.
Frank Rubio lasts 371 days in 2023, while the world record at Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov remains, the 437 consecutive days on board who spent me.
According to Rihana Bokhari, this does it from the Center for Space Medicine at Baylor College “PAR for the course”.
Challenges such as muscles and bone loss, fluid shifts and the adaptation of gravity are well understood and well managed.
“People like Suni Williams are actually known for their interest in movement, and I think they train about what is even their normal recipe,” Bokhari told AFP.
Nevertheless, the unexpected nature of its extended stay – away from their families and initially without enough packaged supplies – has aroused public interest and sympathy.
“If you found out that you went to work today and would get stuck in your office in the next nine months, you may have a panic attack,” Joseph Keebler, psychologist at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, told AFP.
“These people have shown incredible resistance.”
– Trump weighs – –
Her unexpected stay also became a political lightning shelf, with President Donald Trump and his closer consultant Elon Musk – the SpaceX – repeatedly suggested that former President Joe Biden opened the astronauts and rejected an earlier rescue plan.
“You have shamefully forgotten the astronauts because they looked at it for a very embarrassing event for them,” Trump wrote on Monday about the social of truth.
Such accusations have caused an outcry in the space community, especially since Musk did not offer any details and the NASA plan for the return of the astronauts has remained unchanged since their crew-9 new assignment.
Trump also attracted attention for his bizarre comments and has drawn to Williams, a decorated former naval captain, as “the woman with wild hair” and speculated about the personal dynamics between the two.
“They were left up there – I hope they like each other, maybe they love each other, I don’t know,” he said during a recent white house press conference.
IA/BGS
