American astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will return home tonight after spending more than nine months ‘trapped’ at the International Space Station (ISS), the experimental laboratory that revolves around the earth about 400 km of altitude. If everything goes as planned, the expected frost will be carried out about 22.57 hours off the coast of Florida (USA).
The couple’s mission, which was going to last only a few days, became unexpectedly long after their test ship, the Boeing Starliner, suffered technical problems on the trip to the ISS in June. Two months later, it was decided that the capsule returned to the empty earth for security, something that did without problems. Living a special mission only to rescue them would have been excessively expensive, so Williams and Wilmore went to the usual rotation of the ISS astronauts, being part of the CREW-9 with Nick Hague (NASA) and Aleksandr Gorbunov (Roscosmos), which arrived in September with two empty seats for them in the Crew Dragon ‘Freedom’ of Spacex. A name (‘freedom’ in English), on the other hand, very appropriate.
But the rescue ship could not leave until the ISS of the CREW-10, the crew of four members that had to give them the relief as part of the Routine Operations of the ISS. Generally, the change of equipment is carried out every six months. Finally, the CREW-10 docked on Sunday and, after a couple of days to complete the transfer tasks, left free way for the return of the ‘trapped’. NASA even decided to advance the return one day to take advantage of good climatic conditions.
Once the ‘Freedom’ capsule hatch-the CREW-10 ship will be anchored to the ISS-will be closed, it is planned that Wilmore, Williams and his two CREW-9 partners be decoupled from the orbital platform over six in the morning.
The adventures of this couple has been used by President Donald Trump to blame what happened to the administration of Joe Biden, even if he had nothing to do with the matter, and beg at his right hand, Elon Musk, to bring them back home like a hero. They return in a ship of the Spacex company, of which Musk owns, but the use of the capsule was already agreed by NASA for months.
Although Williams and Wilmore, veteran professionals, have said numerous times that they do not feel ‘abandoned’ or ‘stranded’ in space, their prolonged stay in the ISS, without gravity or fresh air and away from their families, has caught the attention of thousands of people throughout the world, worried about their health status and even in case they had enough food or clothes to change. Those needs have always been covered.
During all this time, the two astronauts joined the routine tasks of the station, including scientific and operational works. Williams became the commander of Expedition 72. On January 16, he made a space walk, the eighth of his career. And on January 30, both ‘trapped’ went outside the ISS for 5.5 hours, which made Williams that spent the most time out of the orbital platform: 62 hours and six minutes.
The couple has spent more than nine months in the ISS, but their stay is remarkably less than the 371 days of NASA Frank Rubio’s astronaut aboard the ISS, an American space record. And it falls short in front of the world record held by the Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, which spent 437 days in a row aboard the MIR Space Station. However, they will surely be looking forward to trying what it is to walk again after so long floating in space.
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