What’s the longest amount of time a person has spent in space? NASA trying to bring 2 astronauts home
Planned as an eight-day-long trip to the International Space Station, two NASA astronauts have been stranded there for over two months and counting.
The long delayed first crewed flight of the Boeing Starliner finally had a successful launch on 5 June. The plan was for the two NASA astronauts, Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams, to spend eight days in space at the Intenational Space Station before returning to Earth.
However, a helium leak which had been detected on the launchpad continued once they got into orbit. Additionally, seven thrusters used to guide the capsule failed as they were approaching the International Space Station for docking. The problems continued even after the Starliner was secured to the ISS.
More than two months later, engineers and technical experts are still trying to track down what is causing the issues while Butch and Suni are stranded on the ISS. NASA said at a recent press conference that it is weighing its options for bringing them home and hopes to have an answer within two weeks.
On the one hand, they could attempt to bring them home aboard the beleagured Starliner capsule. On the other, modify the Crew-9 mission scheduled for September using a SpaceX Dragon capsule. That would require sending up two astronauts instead of four, freeing up the necessary space on the craft.
But that would mean that Butch and Suni would have to stay in space for another six months. Even if that were the case, it wouldn’t make them the US astronauts who have spent the longest amount of time in space during a single stay.
What’s the longest amount of time a person has spent in space?
Frank Rubio became the first American to spend more than a year in space in 2023. When he returned to Earth in September 2023 aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft he had been a resident of the ISS for 371 days.
Like his fellow NASA astronauts currently stuck on the ISS, his original ride home was deemed unsafe after it developed a coolant leak. He had to wait for the Russian space agency Roscosmos to send an empty Soyuz to pick him up along with cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin.
But his record stay was more than two months short of the all-time record holder. Cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov spent a whopping 437 consecutive days aboard the Mir space station between 1994 and 1995.