NASA’s astronaut, Sunita Williams, says “we don’t feel abandoned” or “stuck” as the space mission extends

Contrary to a recent publication of social networks of President TrumpAstronaut Starliner Sunita Williams says that she and her crew partner Barry “Butch” Wilmore have not been “practically abandoned” in space, despite a Mission From just over a week to more than nine months.

“I don’t think it’s abandoned. I don’t think we’re trapped here,” CBS CBS Evening News, John Dickerson, told CBS CBS, during a flight interview that is broadcast on Friday night. “We have food. We have clothes. We have a trip home in case something really bad happens to the International Space Station.

“We are in a position … where we have the International Manitized Space Station and doing what taxpayers wanted, doing world -class sciences. And so I feel honored, as I said, to be here and a part of the team.”

NASA is finishing plans to bring Williams and Wilmore to Earth, along with its two crew partners of the space station, the crew commander 9 Nick Hague and the cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, around March 19, the sources. That would shorten its extended stay in orbit in approximately two weeks compared to a previous plan by the end of March or April.

The trip slightly before home would be possible if the next set of flywheels, known as CREW 10, is changed to a different dragon spacecraft, one that can be ready for its launch in mid -March. The switch is needed, the sources say, because the work to prepare the original Spacex Ferry ship for its inaugural flight takes more than expected.

In any case, after a week delivery to put their crew 10 a day with the ins and outs of the space station, Hague, Gorbunov, Wilmore and Williams would discourage and return to Earth.

They will return home aboard the same crew dragon that brought the Hague and Gorbunov to the station Last Septemberalong with two empty seats reserved for the return of Wilmore and Williams.

Why the mission extended for months

Assuming that the dates are maintained, and there are multiple variables at stake, Wilmore and Williams will have registered almost 290 days in orbit since their June 5 launch In a mission it is originally expected to last a little more than a week, the time needed to carry out the first piloted test of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft.

But the Starliner, built as part of a NASA program to develop independent commercial crew boats to transport astronauts to and from the space station, ran into propulsion problems and helium leaks shortly after the launch that caused weeks and then months of tests and analysis.

In the end, NASA managers decided that the risks were too high to tear down Wilmore and Williams aboard the Starliner. Instead, they chose to knock down the ship by remote control, Without its crewand to keep Wilmore and Williams aboard the station until they could make a trip home with The Hague and Gorbunov at the end of the crew of crew 9.

NASA initially planned to bring the four back to earth in FebruaryBut last December, Another month It was added to the mission due to the necessary work to prepare the crew 10 dragon for its launch. Sources now say that more time is needed to finish that job.

Trump talks about crew delay

Last month, the president blamed the general extension of the Starliner team mission to the Biden administration, saying in A publication on social networks That he had asked the founder of Spacex, Elon Musk, to “go to look for” the two “brave astronauts that the Biden administration has practically abandoned in space.” He also called Musk, a multimillionaire follower of the Trump campaign, to head the government efficiency department, or doge, which is accused of Cut the size of the federal government.

Musk said in a previous publication In its social media platform X, which Trump had asked Spacex to take Starliner astronauts home as soon as possible, adding “we will do it. Terrible that the administration drives left them there for so long.”

The NASA administrator at that time, Bill Nelson, was appointed by the Biden Administration, but the decision to extend the Starliner crew mission was taken by the commercial crew programs and the International Space Station of the agency. The plan has been in place since last September, when the 9 dragon crew was launched with two empty seats for Wilmore and Williams.

As such, there is no need to “go” to astronauts: their trip home has been docked at the space station during the last five months.

“We don’t feel abandoned. We feel we are part of the team.”

In the interview, Dickerson asked Williams about the president’s comments about his mission.

“Trump said you and Butch Wilmore, who is your Starliner crew partner, had been, these are the president’s words,” practically abandoned, “said Dickerson.” Do you feel abandoned there, commander? “

“I don’t think those words are quite precise,” Williams replied. “Both Butch and I have lived here at the space station before. We know how NASA and our commercial partners work together. So we expected we were here for a while.

“We are part of something bigger than us. We are part of the International Space Station, and we have obligations with our international partners to do science and exploration while we are here. So we knew that this was going to happen, so not, no, no We feel abandoned.

When asked why the 9 dragon crew could not return to the earth before, since he is already docked at the station, Williams said he would leave the station with a single member of the US crew on board, Don Pettit, who was released at the last year with two cosmonauts aboard a Russian soy spacecraft.

With only an American astronaut on board to respond to emergencies, operate energy, life support and other systems in the NASA segment of the station, high priority investigation would stop. The standard practice is that NASA throws a replacement equipment approximately one week before the outgoing crew game for an orderly delivery.

“Of course, I could have taken us home, but that leaves only three people at the space station from Soyuz’s crew, two Russians and an American,” said Williams. “And the space station is large, it is a building, it is the size of a football field.

“Things can go wrong, and you need to be able to fix it, either inside (or) outside, so having additional people to be able to do that, that capacity, is really important.”

NASA has tightened 10 flyer crew, commander Anne McClain, the pilot Nichole Ayers, the Takuya Onishi from Japan and Cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, to a different crew dragon to avoid adding more time to the already extended mission of crew 9.

Crew 10 is expected to be assigned to a crew dragon that had been assigned for a commercial flight to the station, a mission known as AX-4 that was reserved by Axiom Space based in Houston. That equipment that is not NASA would use the original dragon of the original crew at the end of this spring.

NASA would not comment on the plans. A spokeswoman said that “we cannot confirm any details reported on the return of crew 9 at this time. We are working through the coordination of the advance plans for the Missions of the Agency’s commercial crew program with its various parts interested. We will share more information as soon as we can. “

For his part, Williams said he just wanted to “make the right decision, in the best interest of all of us, of crew 10, of course, and we are happy in any way. Eight days became a couple more Months than that, a couple more months, whatever, it really doesn’t matter.