In their last public image, astronauts trapped In space they could not get up when they left their space capsule, which had just performed a successful setting off the coast of Florida (United States). Two weeks after his return to the ground on a Spacex ship, After a long unexpected 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 perform their first public appearance on Monday afternoon with their partner of the crew mission-9, Nick Hague. The three American astronauts of NASA commented on their participation in the 72 of the ISS in the usual press conference after each of those missions. Only this time was not a space trip at all.
Williams took advantage of his first words to thank Nasa, Boeing in Spacex all the efforts made so that his spatial Odyssey took over and ended successfully, while Wilmore wanted to emphasize that his spatial adventure did not go from Suni and Butch, but from a space plan to cooperation between the nations much larger and more important than them: the ISS. “I just wanted to hug my husband and dogs,” said Williams. Both she and Wilmore agreed on the imperative need that both had to meet their families after returning to Earth after being 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 used to and prepared for the curves and plans to change,” said Wilmore, who refused to blame Boeing of the accident with the Startlliner ship that caused a delay of over nine months on his return. “If my intention was to blame someone, I could blame me, who as commander of a ship could have asked some questions and had not asked 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 have always had a plan to go home”. In addition, he said that “fly back to a Starliner ship” if the opportunity was presented in the future. Both astronauts have shown their trust in the Boeing spaceship, which is still in the test phase, and have trusted that the problems detected in their crew flight will be corrected: “It is a large ship, able to do things that others cannot do, like the combination of automatic control and the manual, and it was an honor 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 became known all over the world as “astronauts trapped in space”. Both astronauts fought to deny that label In all its previous apparitions, made by the ISS during its mission. This Monday had the opportunity to comment on their sensations from the NASA Johnson Space Center of Houston (USA).
In June 2024 Sunita (Dog) Williams y Barry E. (Butch) Wilmore They arrived at the space station. It was the flight of the crew of a Starliner ship. With those ships, Boeing Aerospace Company intends to compete with Spacex in the service that Elon Musk’s company offers from 2020 to NASA for the normal transport of astronauts to ISS. Currently, Russian Musk and Soyuz ships have been crewed with four astronauts at the station every six months, which are raised. Thanks to those normal space flights, the station can remain permanently inhabited; This has passed almost 25 years Uninterruptedly, from the arrival of Expedition 1 in November 2000.
Williams and Wilmore already lived in the ISS twice and this time they were just visiting. A short visit, only eight days. But several minor failures in the propulsion system of the Starliner ship brought the American space agency to postpone their return to later occasions. After a summer of uncertainty, In August 2024, NASA decided that the Starriner would return by himself and that Williams and Wilmore would be integrated into the usual rotation of the station astronauts. Immediately, they were realized in the mission of crew 9, which reached the ISS at the end of September 2024 with only two astronauts: Nick Hague and the Russian Cosmonout Alexander Gorbunov, the only one who was not at the press conference on Monday.
A political turn at the end of the Odyssey
The Ship-a Spacex Dragon crew was traveled to the station with two empty seats, which were reserved for the return trip of the trappedOnce his two new arrivals concluded his long stay in the ISS. And so it was: the return took place on March 18, with almost a month late for the expected one, because Musk’s company was unable to respect the deadlines due to problems with the ship of the mission of the crew-10, which had to alleviate Williams, Wilmore, Hague and Gorbunov.
His return was surrounded by political controversies, because the president of the United States Donald Trump said in January that his director Elon Musk was about to save “as soon as possible” in one of his ships to astronauts “Cowed, that Biden had left abandoned to the space station.” Both gave a version of the story that misrepresented the facts: no rescue mission was needed, because NASA already had its planned return on a normal 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 have been in February 2025. Williams and Wilmore returned two weeks ago – with their two companions – after 285 days of space, which would be only 10 when they took off.
