In their last public image, astronauts trapped In the space they could not stand up when they left their space capsule, which had just performed a successful amering off the coast of Florida (USA). After an unexpected long stay of nine and a half months at the International Space Station (ISS), Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore reappeared with good humor and energy to carry out their first public appearance on the afternoon of Monday with their partner of the CREW-9 mission, Nick Hague. NASA’s three American astronauts commented on their participation in expedition 72 of the ISS in the usual press conference after each of those missions.
Williams took advantage of his first words to thank NASA, Boeing to Spacex all efforts made so that his space odyssey would take off and end successfully, while Wilmore wanted to emphasize that his space adventure did not go from Suni and Butch, but from a space plan to cooperation between nations much greater and more important than them: the ISS. “I just wanted to hug my husband and my dogs,” said Williams. Both she and Wilmore agreed on the imperative need that both had to meet with their families after returning to Earth after having been in space for 285 days, when their initial flight plan was only 10 days.
“However, in our business, the road is never straight. We are accustomed and prepared for curves and the plans to change,” said Wilmore, who refused to blame Boeing of the incident with the Starlliner ship that caused a delay of more than nine months on his return. “If my intention were to blame someone, I could blame me, who as a ship’s commander could have asked some questions and did not ask them. If I had asked those questions before taking off, the ship’s problems would not have happened during the flight,” said the American astronaut.
Faced with the qualification of trapped astronauts, his mission partner recalled that, thanks to all the organizations involved, “we always had a plan to return home.” In addition, he said that “it would fly again in a Starliner ship” if the occasion is presented in the future. Both astronauts showed their confidence in Boeing’s astronave, which is still in the testing phase, and they trusted that the problems detected in their manned flight will be corrected: “It is a great ship, capable of doing things that others cannot do, such as combining automatic control and the manual, and it has been an honor to be able to travel in it,” Williams bet.
Due to the failures in a Boeing ship on the first trip, during the summer of 2024 Williams and Wilmore they became known worldwide as the “astronauts trapped in space.” In all its previous appearances, made from the ISS during its mission. This Monday they have had the opportunity to comment their sensations from the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston (USA).
In June 2024 Sunita (Dog) Williams y Barry E. (Butch) Wilmore was the manned flight of a Starliner ship. With those ships, the Boeing Aerospace Company intends to compete with Spacex in the service that Elon Musk’s company offers from 2020 to NASA for regular astronaut transport to ISS. Currently, the Musk and Soyuz Russian ships have been crew of four astronauts to the station every six months, which are relieved. Thanks to those regular spatial flights, the station can remain permanently inhabited; Uninterruptedly, since the arrival of expedition 1 in November 2000.
Williams and Wilmore had already been living in the ISS twice and this time they were only visiting. A short visit, only eight days. But multiple minor failures in the propulsion system of the Starliner ship took the US space agency to postpone their return on successive occasions. In August 2024, NASA decided that the Starliner would return alone and that Williams and Wilmore would be integrated into the usual rotation of astronauts of the station. Immediately, they were reallocated to the CREW-9 mission, which reached the ISS at the end of September 2024 with only two astronauts: Nick Hague and the Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, the only one who was not at the press conference on Monday.
A political turn at the end of the Odyssey
The CREW-9 ship-a spacex dragon-traveled to the station with two empty seats, which were reserved for the return trip of the trappedonce his two new newcomers ended his long stay in the ISS. And so it was: the return occurred on March 18, with almost a month late on the expected, because of the CREW-10 mission, which had to relieve Williams, Wilmore, Hague and Gorbunov.
His return was surrounded by political controversy, because US President Donald Trump said in January that his advisor “caught, that Biden had left abandoned at the space station.” Both gave a version of the story that misrepresented the facts: no rescue mission was necessary, because NASA already had its planned return on a regular space flight. In the end, there was no change of plans: there was no rescue, nor did he really advance his return – NASA announced in August 2024 that his return would be in February 2025. Williams and Wilmore returned two weeks ago – with their two companions – after 285 days in space, which were going to be only 10 when they took off.
