NASA astronauts speak out for space for the first time after an unexpected 9-month mission

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Two astronauts, the planned one-week orbit in a low orbit on the way to a more than 9-month mission due to problems with space vehicles unexpectedly assembled on Monday, spoke publicly with reporters on Monday on Terra company on March 18.

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore from NASA aroused worldwide attention, as problems with their Boeing Starliner vehicle during a June test flight to the international space station. When they were waiting for an alternative journey home, the couple faced a stream of rhetoric that was strengthened by politicians and the media because they were “abandoned”, “stranded” or “stuck” – descriptors that contested the astronauts themselves.

Williams, Wilmore and NASA astronaut Nick Hague, all of which were part of the crew 9 mission that the test flight team ultimately brought to Earth, dealt with the earth during a NASA press conference.

“We always came back and I think people have to know that,” said Williams. “We are again, you know, share our story with so many people, because … it is unique, and there are some lessons, and part of it is only a resistance and able to take a turn that was unexpected and make the best of it.”

Williams admitted that she and Wilmore knew that the Starliner test mission went to the Starliner test mission that the flying of a new spaceship was “unique”, but was not awaiting all the attention that their extended stay was won. As soon as the duo realized that it would be part of the crew space station longer than expected, “floated,” said Williams.

“We are members of the international crew space station and we do what all our other friends in the Astronaut office do: work and train and make fantastic science experiments at the international space station,” said Williams.

Williams said she and Wilmore were honored and humiliated by the interest in their trip.

“When we came home (it was) like, wow, there are many people who are interested,” she said. “Very grateful, very amazed that we could hopefully be a positive element to bring people together.”

Both Williams and Wilmore said that Starliner was “very capable”. In view of the chance, according to Wilmore, they would fly it again in the future.

“We will fix all the problems we came across,” said Wilmore. “We will fix it, we will get it up.

The astronauts were repeatedly asked about every policy that came into play during their time.

“When we work up there in space, they don’t feel politics,” said Hague. “You don’t feel anything of it.”

During an interview with Fox News on Monday, Wilmore said for the first time, he thought: “We are in certain respects.”

But he continued to refute the broader story that he and Williams were abandoned.

“Based on how they were firing? That we were left and forgotten and everything? We weren’t near it,” said Wilmore.

Elon Musk, CEO of President Donald Trump and SpaceX, now one of Trump’s best consultants, have repeatedly withdrawn from Williams and Wilmores’ acceleration.

Trump and Musk also accused the bidges administration to give up astronauts in space for “political reasons”, although there is no publicly available evidence for this claim.

Wilmore repeated earlier statements on Monday that Muschus and Trump “believes”, although he did not say what specifically about what.

“You gave me no reason not to trust you – one of you,” Wilmore told Fox News when he was asked what he would say Trump and Mousk. “I am grateful that our national leaders actually come in and take part in our human space flight program.”

Go back to life on earth

During their months of stay, Williams and Wilmore were assigned in the orbit laboratory of the crew 9 mission and integrated into the employees of the space station. When their stay was exposed to further extensions, the astronauts entered that it was difficult to be gone on earth from family and friends.

“I was thinking about not being there for my daughter’s high school year? Of course, but (we) divided.” It’s not about me, it’s not about my feelings. It’s about what this human space flight program is about: it is our national goals. “

Despite the controversial rhetoric over the mission, the astronaut duo also enjoyed the time in space.

“It’s fantastic up here. I mean, who doesn’t want to spend this with these views and spend time with this company?” In February, Williams said of CNNS Anderson Cooper from the space station from the space station.

Haag praised Wilmore and Williams on Monday as highly qualified astronauts who were welcomed when they helped the current station teams at work through experiments and other tasks – more than “GAP fillers on the ward,” he said at the press conference.

“They were productive and urged the Mission Vorwärts and Sun was the station commander, so she called her shots,” said Hague. “So they come into this environment, in this operational environment, politics, they do not make it up there. We work as part of an international team that spans the globe … and we only find out how we can do it. This is the magic of the human space flight that we can concentrate on something so positive that people have contracted. And we have been doing it for a long time.”

After returning home, Williams said that she couldn’t wait to hug her husband and dogs. She said she felt good and yesterday gave a 3-mile run-etwas that she says is proof of the coaches of the astronauts who “swing” it to help the crew live back to life on earth.

“I mean, who would even imagine that they will come back from about 10 months (in space) and run 2 miles at an eight -minute pace within a week,” said Wilmore. “I think it is not even conceivable that the body could handle it. But these people make us preparing where this kind of things happen.”

The reaction of the NASA to the narrative “plug -in”

In order to be clear, the NASA officers consistently contested that Williams and Wilmore were ever “stranded”.

“We always had a lifeboat, one way to come home,” said Steve Stich, who runs NASA’s Commercial Crew program under the SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Spaceship and the Boeing Starliner vehicle on March 18.

During the news conferences for the return of the astronauts on March 18, the NASA officials were asked on the earth on Earth how much loan should be admitted to Trump and Musk.

For the most important context: The space agency has equipped Williams and Wilmores way home last summer – long before Muschus or Trump began talking about it.

For his part, the leaders of NASA largely avoided to make the president or musk.

For example, Joel Montalbano, the deputy Associate Administrator of the Space Operations Mission Directorates of Space Agency, spoke to the matter after Williams and Wilmore injected off the Florida coast.

“I think many of them heard that the President asked SpaceX in January what it would need to bring this crew home. And I will tell them that we already looked at options when this question was asked,” he said.

After Montalbano had been asked by journalists, NASA added that NASA had “received the input from the White House”.

“But you also have to look at the willingness to vehicle,” said Montalbano. “We talked about looking at the weather. We spoke about the restoration team, the handover of the recovery, vehicle traffic, which drives vehicle traffic to and from the international space station. When they put together all of this, we came up with a pretty good plan that the teams have executed in the last four or five days.”

“Vehicle readiness” is an important sentence.

During the press conference on March 18, Staschin said the next available SpaceX Dragon spaceship, which Williams and Wilmore could bring home, were home. The fact that the spaceship was in and the same indicates that SpaceX had no other vehicle that could have flyed a separate, committed mission in order to return the astronauts earlier.

That would contradict Muschus. Previously, SpaceX stated that the astronauts – perhaps their return after months – to accelerate the astronauts to someone within the White House of Biden, but his proposal was rejected for “political reasons”. Musk said he did not make the offer directly to NASA, although it is unclear why.

It is also not clear what the details of this offer could have been and who was in particular directed.

A former Senior Biden White House Officer and former Senior NASA officer previously said CNN that they had never heard such an offer.

“I am not aware of any messages that came directly into the White House, whether directly or indirectly on the way – and there was a tight team,” said the former source of the White House from Biden.

Remarkably, NASA said in December that it would delay the return of crew-9 due to SpaceX. In particular, the company pursued some hangings that prepared a new Space Crew dragoon capsule for crew-10 a mission with a fresh astronaut crew that had to arrive in front of Crew-9 at the Space Station, which Wilmore and Williams was allowed to get out of.

NASA and SpaceX later opted for the use of another capsule for the crew 10 mission, a pre-tread dragon vehicle.

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