Getting stuck on the International Space Station for an extended stay could be the ultimate dream vacation. Great views of Earth and the solar system right out the window. Flying Superman-style in zero gravity while floating M&Ms into each other’s mouths. There’s even decent internet and an expansive movie selection. Unfortunately for Sunita Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore, the NASA astronauts who have had their stay on the space station extended indefinitely while NASA and Boeing determine what went wrong with their spacecraft, the bah-humbug bureaucrats at NASA aren’t allowing them a vacation. While engineers on the ground examine why several of the Starliner spacecraft’s thrusters failed on the way to the station, the astronauts have to work.
The space station is, after all, an orbiting laboratory, and the astronauts’ job while there is to conduct science experiments and upkeep on the station. Now that there are two extra pairs of hands, the work, including the most tedious of chores (yes, even a little toilet maintenance), is being spread around among the nine astronauts on board living in a ship the length of a football field with the living space of a Boeing 747 airplane.
Williams and Wilmore arrived at the space station on June 6 for what was supposed to be about an eight-day mission that, as of Friday, has stretched to 51 days. The delay is because during the approach to the station, five of the spacecraft’s thrusters shut off suddenly, and the spacecraft also sprang a series of small but persistent helium leaks in its propulsion system. Since then, engineers from Boeing and NASA have been running tests to determine what went wrong and to ensure that the spacecraft is safe to fly Wilmore and Williams home.
At a briefing Thursday, NASA officials still could not say when that would be. They said that Starliner is probably still healthy enough to fly the crew home, but that decision would be made during an intensive review, involving top leadership from NASA and Boeing, that could be scheduled as early as next week. But they’ve said repeatedly that the astronauts are not stranded and that in the case of an emergency, they could fly home in Starliner.
The mission is the first flight of Starliner with people on board, a test to see how the spacecraft performs before NASA allows a full contingent of four astronauts to fly to the space station for stays as long as six months. Despite their rocky ride to the space station, the astronauts said this month that they have full confidence in Starliner and are enjoying their extended stay in space, where they can remain in contact with friends and family at home.
Wilmore, 61, is a retired Navy captain and fighter jet pilot from Tennessee who is married with two daughters. Williams, 58, is from Massachusetts and is also a retired captain in the Navy, where she served as a helicopter pilot. She is married and enjoys time with the family dogs. “We’ve been thoroughly busy up here, integrated right into the crew,” Williams said during a briefing with reporters. “It feels like coming back home. It feels good to float around. It feels good to be in space and work up here with the International Space Station team. So yeah, it’s great to be up here.” Wilmore added, “It’s a great place to be, a great place to live, a great place to work.”
Since arriving at the station, they have used an ultrasound machine to scan their veins to collect data on how space affects the human body. Williams worked on studies that examined the “use of microgravity to manufacture higher-quality optical fibers” than can be made on Earth. She also worked on a study using “fluid physics, such as surface tension, to overcome the lack of gravity when nourishing and watering plants grown in space. In addition to science, there are chores to do, such as “maintenance that has been waiting for a little while — stuff that’s been on the books for a little bit,” Williams said.
So they’ve been assigned, like a pair of hands on the crew of a ship at sea, to take inventory of the station’s food supplies. They’ve swapped out a urine processing pump. Wilmore, a bit of a handyman who builds tables and sheds for his church, was tasked with servicing a pair of freezers used to hold research samples as well as refilling the coolant loops in one of the station’s water pumps. They’ve even had a little bit of a scare. At one point last month, all the astronauts had to scramble to their respective spacecraft because a satellite broke apart at an altitude near the space station, potentially posing a threat. Williams and Wilmore jumped inside Starliner and began to prepare to undock in case debris from the satellite slammed into the station, forcing them to evacuate. In the end, the debris passed without incident, and the crew resumed operations.
Weightlessness is a joy, especially after astronauts adapt and fly around the station with ease. “Gravity sucks. It’s horrible,” veteran NASA astronaut Sandy Magnus once said. But despite the wonders of whizzing around the globe at 17,500 mph, experiencing a sunrise every 90 minutes and seeing entire continents in your field of view, space can get old. Even the most hardened astronauts get homesick. The station can feel cramped. Going to the bathroom, a delicate procedure involving suction, is unpleasant. And the lack of gravity makes astronauts feel constantly congested as fluids shift in their bodies. “I think the perfect space mission is probably about a month because it gives you enough time to start feeling normal, and then you would go home,” Scott Kelly, the former NASA astronaut who spent nearly a year on the space station, said in an interview.
Having extra people on the station means the food supplies will be depleted more quickly, and the systems designed to scrub carbon dioxide from the space station’s air need to work harder. “They’re going to put a little bit of a strain on that,” Kelly said. “On the other hand, there are four extra hands to do more work. And there always seems to be a lot of work to be done up there. So that’s a positive.” Astronauts are trained for all sorts of scenarios, he said, especially when things go awry. And the crews on the ground work tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure the astronauts’ safety. “They have our lives in their hands, and they’re very professional,” Kelly said. “It’s spaceflight, it’s risky, it’s dangerous. Stuff can go wrong. But you’ve got to trust the hardware and the people, and I’m confident they’re going to be fine.”
Extending astronauts’ stays on the space station is something NASA has done before. In 2022, a Russian spacecraft that had flown NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and two Russian cosmonauts to the station sprang a massive leak, forcing Russia to send up a rescue craft to bring them home. As a result, Rubio’s planned six-month stay was doubled, giving him the record for the longest continuous stay in space for an American: 371 days. At first, he said, the extension was difficult. “It was challenging because you knew you’d be away from your family longer than anticipated,” he told NPR. “But you also knew that they were making the right decision as for our safety. … And so once you got over the initial shock and surprise, you just kind of focused on making the best of it and making sure that the mission was accomplished.”
With that much time in space, he was able to truly adapt, he said, and get better at living and working in a weightless environment. He was, he told Space.com, “incredibly lucky in the fact that you’re able to take those lessons learned and immediately implement them. A lot of people have to wait five, six or 10 years [for a second mission] until they are able to implement those things that they just learned.” Before their flight on Starliner, Wilmore and Williams had waited years to return to space. Both are veterans of two previous spaceflights, with more than 500 days in space combined between them, and had been eager to return. Before the flight, Williams said in an interview she was aware that since this was a test flight she and Wilmore might be forced to improvise. “We do anticipate everything’s going to go as planned,” she said. “But if it doesn’t, we’ll take a moment and analyze it and talk about it, and we’ll be okay. So our confidence in the mission is high.” She added: “I’m not complaining that we’re here for a couple extra weeks.”
