Cabo Cañaveral, Florida – The replacements of the two NASA astronauts stranded at the International Space Station took off Friday night, which paves the way for its return after nine long months.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams need Spacex to take this relay team to the space station so they can return. It is expected that their replacements arrive on Saturday night.
The POT He wants the two crews to coincide in the US so that Wilmore and Williams can inform newcomers about what has happened aboard the laboratory in orbit. That would put them on the way to a decoupling next week and amering off the coast of Florida, provided that the weather conditions allow it.
The duo will be escorted back by astronauts that flew on a rescue mission in Spacex in September last year.
The new crew, which took off from the NASA Kennedy Space Center, includes Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers of the NASA, both military pilots, already Takuya Onishi from Japan and Kirill Peskov in Russia, both airlines of airlines. They will spend the next six months at the space station, which is considered normal time, after replacing Wilmore and Williams.
“Space flights are strong, but humans are stronger,” McClain said minutes after launch.
As test pilots of the new Boeing Starliner capsule, Wilmore and Williams expected to be out only a week or so when they took off Cabo Cañaveral on June 5. A series of helium leaks and failures in the propellants fogged their trip to the space station, triggering an investigation of months by NASA and Boeing about the best way to proceed.
Finally, considering that it was not safe, NASA ordered the Starliner to return empty last September, and decided that Wilmore and Williams take a scheduled spacex flight to return in February. His return was further postponed when the new Spacex capsule needed extensive battery repairs before he could lead to his replacements. To save a few weeks, Spacex changed to a used capsule, advancing the return of Wilmore and Williams in mid -March.
The unexpectedly long mission took a political turn when US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, Spacex’s general director, promised at the beginning of this year to accelerate the return of astronauts and blamed the previous government for having delayed it.
On the other hand, Wilmore and Williams, captains retired from the navy that have previously lived at the space station, have emphasized on several occasions that support the decisions taken by their NASA bosses since last summer. The two helped keep the station in operation – they repeated a damaged toilet, they watered the plants and performed experiments – and even went out together on a space walk. With nine space walks, Williams established a new record for women: the longest time dedicated to walking in space throughout a race.
A last -moment hydraulic problem delayed the initial launch attempt on Wednesday. Concerns arose about one of the two clamping arms in the support structure of the Falcon rocket that needs to separate before takeoff. Spacex subsequently purge the hydraulic arm system to remove trapped air.
The prolonged duo stay, they said, has been more difficult for their families: Wilmore’s two daughters, and Williams’ husband and mother.
“We appreciate all the samples of love and support,” Williams said in an interview earlier this week. “This mission has brought some attention. There are good and bad things in that. But I think the good part is that more and more people have been interested in what we are doing ”with space exploration.