Finally! A replacement crew is heading to the ISS, and Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will come home at last.
Finally! A replacement crew is heading to the ISS, and Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will come home at last.
NASA astronauts Sunita « Suni » Williams and Barry « Butch » Wilmore have been on the International Space Station for more than eight months, even though they initially expected to stay for just about eight days. It’s finally time to come home, and their replacements are on the way.
A relief crew for the ISS launched Friday, after two days of delays, the first due to a hydraulic system issue with a ground support clamp arm for the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the second due to weather. But on Friday, at 7:03 pm ET, Crew-10, consisting of NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov successfully launched on their journey to the ISS.
NASA Crew-10 Astronauts Launch to ISS on SpaceX Rocket
Once they arrive, there will be a two-day handover period, and then Williams, Wilmore, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will be on their way back to Earth. They could be on their return trip as early as March 19.
On March 7, Williams turned over command of the ISS to Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin as she prepared to return home.’We’re not stuck’
Williams told PBS NewsHour recently that they don’t feel abandoned by NASA.
« Obviously, there’s a lot of discussion about it, so maybe people could conceive that that’s the way we are, but we’re not stuck », she said. « We’re part of a bigger process, right? »
When asked about the practicalities of suddenly being in space much longer than anticipated, without extra supplies, Wilmore said that it wasn’t a problem.
« We did launch with fewer clothing, if you will, and that was intentional », he said. « We brought up some extra gear that needed — the space station needed. We brought it up with us. So we took some of our clothes off. We were only going to be here a week or so.
« But we made do. It was no big deal, honestly. The space station program plans for multiple contingencies. We stockpile food to last four months beyond what is expected, at a minimum. Some — most times, it’s longer than that, food and other amenities, wet wipes, everything that you need up here. »
Wilmore told PBS that he can talk to his family from space, noting that he not only talks with his two daughters but to the boyfriend of his youngest daughter.
