American astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore will soon return to Earth. NASA said on Tuesday that they will be brought back in mid-March. The two astronauts have been stranded on the space station for the past 8 months.
Previously, the final date for the astronauts’ return was set for the end of March or April. They will be brought back in a SpaceX capsule.
Sunita Williams arrived at the ISS with Butch Wilmore on June 5 last year. She was supposed to return a week later. The two of them went to test Boeing’s new Starliner capsule but after it developed a malfunction, they were left on the ISS. Since then, they have both been stuck there.
Earlier, NASA had announced that Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore would be brought back by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft in February 2025. However, this did not happen.
Elon Musk will bring back Sunita Williams, who was trapped in space
New US President Donald Trump has tasked SpaceX CEO Elon Musk with bringing back stranded astronaut Sunita Williams and her colleague Butch Wilmore, who have been stranded in space since June last year.
Trump wrote on social media last month: I have asked Musk to bring back those two ‘brave astronauts’. They were left in space by the Biden administration. They have been waiting on the space station for many months. Musk will start working on this soon. Hope everyone is safe.
Musk replied that we would do the same. It’s terrible that the Biden administration has left them there for so long.
Why were Sunita and Wilmore sent to the space station?
Sunita Williams and Bush Wilmore went on a joint ‘Crew Flight Test Mission’ of Boeing and NASA. In this, Sunita was the pilot of the spacecraft. Bush Wilmore, who accompanied her, was the commander of this mission. Both of them were to return to Earth after staying in the International Space Station (ISS) for 8 days.
At the launch, Boeing Defense, Space and Security President and CEO Ted Colbert called it a great start to a new era of space exploration. The mission’s primary objective was to demonstrate the spacecraft’s ability to carry astronauts to and from the space station.
The astronauts also had to conduct research and several experiments during their 8 days on the space station. Sunita and Wilmore are the first astronauts to be sent on a space journey by an Atlas-V rocket. During this mission, they also had to fly the spacecraft manually. Many objectives related to flight tests were also to be completed.
How did Sunita and Wilmore get stuck in space for so long?
The Starliner spacecraft has faced many problems since its launch. Due to this, launches had failed several times even before June 5. There were reports of problems with the spacecraft even after launch.
NASA said that there was a small helium leak in the thruster of the spacecraft’s service module. The spacecraft has many thrusters. With their help, the spacecraft changes its path and speed. Helium gas creates pressure on the rocket. Its structure remains strong, which helps the rocket in its flight.
The spacecraft’s capsule leaked helium 5 times in the 25 days after launch. 5 thrusters stopped working. In addition, the propellant valve could not be completely closed. The crew in space and the mission manager in Houston, USA, could not work together to fix it.