Stuck in space: The latest on NASA’s stranded astronauts awaiting return to Earth
Commander Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore have finally left the International Space Station, but only briefly.
After eight long months aboard there has finally been some movement at the International Space Station. However the two stranded astronauts have not made it very far.
Commander Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore arrived at the space station in Boeing’s Starliner capsule last June but the new vessel ran into problems. The capsule experienced last-minute thruster trouble that nearly derailed the docking, sparking concern about the Starliner going forward.
In response to those issues NASA decided to bring the capsule back to earth without any humans on board, leaving Williams and Wilmore stranded, temporarily, at the International Space Station. They have now been there for eight months and finally ventured outside in late January.
The two astronauts exited on a spacewalk and carried out some minor aerospace upkeep. A broken antenna was removed and the exterior was wiped down to minimise the risk of contamination. This little excursion was the second time that Williams had carried out a spacewalk on this trip but marked Wilmore’s first.
When will the NASA astronauts return to Earth?
In recent years NASA has outsourced the business of astronaut transportation to private companies, hiring Boeing and SpaceX to replace the now-defunct shuttle program. The SpaceX taxi service will be used to bring Williams and Wilmore back down to Earth but there has been a bit of a delay.
AP reports that SpaceX has suffered issues in the launch of replacement vessels and is unlikely to bring them home until late March, or even early April. By that point, they will have been at the ISS for around ten months. They had planned to be there for just eight days but insist that they are in a “happy place” despite the delay.
“Eventually we wanna go home,” Williams explained. “We left our families a little while ago... But we have a lot to do up here and we have to get that stuff done before we go.”
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