CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida – The two astronauts who have been stranded aboard the International Space Station since June welcomed their new trip home on Sunday, when a SpaceX spacecraft arrived.
SpaceX launched the rescue mission on Saturday with a smaller crew of two astronauts and two empty seats designated for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who will return next year. The Dragon capsule docked in the dark as the two aircraft flew 265 miles (426 km) above Botswana.
Stuck NASA Astronauts Welcome SpaceX Capsule That’ll Bring Them Home Next Year
NASA sent Wilmore and Williams to SpaceX after worries about the safety of their Boeing Starliner capsule. It was the first Starliner test flight with a crew, and NASA determined that the thruster failures and helium leaks that occurred after liftoff were too dangerous and little understood to jeopardise the test pilots’ safety. So the Starliner returned to Earth empty earlier this month.
The Dragon, which is carrying NASA’s Nick Hague and the Russian Space Agency’s Alexander Gorbunov, will stay at the space station until February, extending what was supposed to be a weeklong trip for Wilmore and Williams to more than eight months.
“I just want to say welcome to our new compadres,” said Williams, the space station commander, as Hague and Gorbunov floated inside and were greeted by the nine astronauts who awaited them.
Hague stated that it was a smooth flight up. “Coming through the hatch and seeing all the smiles, and as much as I’ve laughed and cried in the last 10 minutes, I know it’s going to be an amazing expedition,” he told me.
NASA like to renew its station crews every six months or so. SpaceX has been providing the taxi service since its first astronaut flight in 2020. NASA also engaged Boeing for ferry flights after the space shuttles were gone, but defective software and other Starliner difficulties caused years of delays and cost more than $1 billion to correct.
Starliner inspections are ongoing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre, with post-flight data evaluations scheduled to begin this week.
“We’re a long way from saying, ‘Hey, we’re writing off Boeing,'” NASA’s associate administrator Jim Free stated during a pre-launch briefing.
Stuck NASA Astronauts Welcome SpaceX Capsule That’ll Bring Them Home Next Year
With the arrival of two new astronauts, the four who have been up there since March will be able to return to Earth in their own SpaceX capsule in little over a week, reducing the station’s crew size to the customary seven. Their stay was extended by a month due to the Starliner incident.
Although Saturday’s launch went properly, SpaceX claimed the rocket’s discarded upper stage ended up outside its intended landing zone in the Pacific due to a faulty engine firing. The corporation has paused all Falcon launches until it investigates what went wrong.was extended by a month due to the Starliner crisis.
SOURCE | AP
