NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore have been at the International Space Station since June because of their faulty Boeing spacecraft.
NASA’s two stuck astronauts are just a few weeks away from returning to Earth after nine months in space.
The replacements for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will be coming next week to the International Space Station (ISS), making it possible for them to leave later this month.
NASA’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Alexander Gorbunov will be joining them on the ride home.
Hague and Gorbunov came to the ISS in a SpaceX capsule last September with two empty seats.
Wilmore and Williams went on what was supposed to be a week-long mission aboard Boeing’s new Starliner last June, but stayed in space as the faulty capsule came back to Earth without them.
‘It’s been a rollercoaster’
Their homecoming was delayed again because SpaceX needed more time to complete the capsule needed to bring their replacements to the International Space Station.
Over the last few months, Wilmore and Williams have said they are healthy and committed to staying for the entire length of their mission.
Williams said the hardest part about the unexpected stay was the wait by their families back home.
“It’s been a roller coaster for them, probably a little bit more so than for us,” she said. “We’re here. We have a mission. We’re just just doing what we do every day, and every day is interesting because we’re up in space and it’s a lot of fun”.
Accelerating the astronauts’ return
US President Donald Trump and SpaceX’s Elon Musk said at the end of January that they wanted to accelerate the astronauts’ return, blaming the previous administration for the delay.
During a news conference on Tuesday, Wilmore said that while politics is part of life, it did not play into his and Williams’ return.
“We came up prepared to stay long even though we planned to stay short, that’s what we do in human space flight,” Wilmore said.
Williams did take issue with Musk’s recent call to dump the space station in a couple of years, instead of waiting until NASA’s projected deorbit in 2031.
“This place is ticking. It’s just really amazing, so I would say we’re actually in our prime right now,” said Williams, a three-time space station resident. “I would think that right now is probably not the right time to say quit, call it quits”.
