Wilmore and Williams need SpaceX to fly this relief crew to the space station before they can check out, arrival is scheduled for late Saturday night.
NASA boeing starliner crew, suni williams, butch wilmore
NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts (from top) Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams inside the vestibule between the forward port on the International Space Station’s Harmony module and the Starliner spacecraft.
Photo: NASA
NASA and SpaceX on Friday launched a long-awaited crew to the International Space Station that opens the door to bringing home U.S. astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who have been stuck on the orbital lab for nine months, AP reported.
Wilmore and Williams need SpaceX to fly this relief crew to the space station before they can check out. Arrival is scheduled for late Saturday night.
NASA wants an overlap between the two crews so Wilmore and Williams can brief the newcomers on what happens aboard the orbiting lab. That will prepare them for undocking next week and splashdown off the Florida coast, weather permitting.
The duo will be escorted back by astronauts who flew up on a rescue mission on SpaceX last September alongside two empty seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams on the return leg.
About The New Crew
The new crew, which will be launching into orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, includes NASA's Anne McClain and Nicole Ayers, both military pilots; and Japan's Takuya Onishi and Russia's Kirill Peskov, both former airline pilots.
They will spend the next six months at the space station, considered the normal stint, after springing Wilmore and Williams free.
"Spaceflight is tough, but humans are tougher," McClain said minutes into the flight, ap reported.
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Eventually ruling it unsafe, NASA ordered Starliner to fly back empty last September and moved Wilmore and Williams to a SpaceX flight due back in February.
Their return was further delayed when SpaceX's brand new capsule needed extensive battery repairs before launching their replacements. To save a few weeks, SpaceX switched to a used capsule, moving up Wilmore and Williams' homecoming to mid-March.
Global Attention
Their unexpectedly long mission, already capturing global attention, took a political turn earlier this year when President Donald Trump and SpaceX’s Elon Musk vowed to speed up the astronauts’ return and blamed the previous administration for delays.
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US President Donald Trump had said that he and Elon Musk were working to bring back NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore.
“I authorised Elon (Musk) a week ago. I said, ‘You know, we have two people up there that Biden and Kamala (Harris) left up there’. And he knows it very well. I said, ‘Are you equipped to get them?’ He said, ‘Yeah'," said Trump.