Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams flew to the orbital lab in June last year, on what was supposed to be a days-long roundtrip to test out Boeing’s Starliner on its first crewed flight.
But the spaceship developed propulsion problems and was deemed unfit to fly them back, instead returning empty without more major problems.
Ex-Navy pilots Wilmore and Williams, 62 and 59 respectively, were instead re-assigned to the Nasa-SpaceX Crew-9 mission, which saw a Dragon spacecraft fly to the ISS last September with a team of two, rather than the usual four, to make room for the “stranded” pair.
Then, early Sunday, a relief team called Crew-10 docked with the station, their arrival met with broad smiles and hugs as they floated through the hatch.
Crew-10’s arrival clears the way for Wilmore and Williams to depart, along with American Nick Hague and Russian astronaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
If all goes smoothly, the Dragon craft will deploy its parachutes off the coast of Florida for an ocean splashdown, where a recovery vessel will retrieve the crew.
Wilmore and Williams’ stay surpasses the standard six-month ISS rotation but ranks only sixth among US records for single-mission duration.
Challenges such as muscle and bone loss, fluid shifts, and readjusting to gravity are well understood and well managed. (AFP)
