On June 5, 2024, the Starliner ship, from Boeing. It was not his first release, but the first manned mission. At the controls there were no ‘rookies’ precisely: Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, NASA pilot experts and with experience in space, they were conscientiously trained in the handling of the new vehicle, which was supposed to be shortly the new means of American transport to the International Space Station (ISS, for its acronym in English), next to the Crew Dragon of Spacex. At first, everything went well. But upon reaching the Earth’s orbit, the new ship began to give such serious failures that motivated that the mission, that was going to last a week, has extended nine and a half months.
Specifically, nine months and thirteen days because at dawn on Wednesday, finally, and after a whole space soap opera in which even political controversy, Williams and Wilmore have emerged have returned home. The Dragon ship in which they have returned – and that has erected Elon Musk, owner of Spacex, as a kind of ‘Salvador’ of the baptized as ‘trapped’ – together with the astronauts Nick Hague and the cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov was dismantled the previous morning of the ISS without any setback.
After a sixteen hours of travel and with British punctuality, at 22.57 Spanish time as planned, the Freedom capsule, which returned for the fourth time of the space (the Spacex ships are reusable), played the water of the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Florida.
A few minutes later, the rescue teams were responsible for recovering the capsule, climbing it to the main ship and opening the hatch that allowed air to breathe from our planet to Williams and Wilmore after nine and a half months in space.
A space odyssey
The problems of trapped began shortly after the take -off of the Starliner ship, which although it was not their first time in space, it was released with a traffic on board. Everything was like silk until when reaching the terrestrial orbit to face the path to ISS, several helium leaks were reported. “The ship could continue to function regularly even with more,” they said from Boeing. The thing became worse when, already in the maneuvers of bearing, 5 of the 28 propelars of the ship failed.
In the end, the second is already manually, the Starliner reached its destination. However, the mission, which was going to last about ten days at most, lengthened for weeks and months, looking for the root of all those problems. Finally, NASA decided that Williams and Wilmore stay at the ISS with the following crew, which would go down in February; and that Boeing’s ship will go down to the empty earth.
Since then, Williams and Wilmore have been in the ISS as part of the CREW-9, a crew that was initially going to be four people, but that was reduced in half to leave a hole in the Dragon ship for the return of the two trapped. During this time they have participated in different scientific experiments, as well as in space walks and in connections with the media in which they have explained that, despite the controversy that was provoking the expansion of their mission, they were prepared for these types of problems.
And they have not only had to deal with the consequences of their failed trip. They have also faced collateral damage that the following mission, the CREW-10, was first delayed a month and then a few days between comments and pressures of Donald Trump, who came again to the presidency of the USA while Wilmore and Williams were in the ISS and has taken advantage of the event to charge against his predecessor Biden. In addition, he reinforced the role of ‘Hero’ throughout this story to his new right hand, Elon Musk, owner of Spacex, the creator of the Dragon, the only vehicle with Soyuz Russians who are now able to send astronauts to the ISS.
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