From left, clockwise: the astronauts of NASA Butch Wilmore, Nick Hague, Suni Williams and Roscosmosmosmosmos Cosmonout Aleksandr Gorbunov should return to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS) Tuesday evening. Credit: NASA
The astronauts of NASA Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who flew to the International Space Station (ISS) in June for an eight -day stay, should finally return to Earth Tuesday after spending more than nine months in orbit in orbit in orbit in orbit in orbit in orbit
The Space Agency on Sunday said that the astronauts – the commander and the pilot of the Boeing Starliner’s Inaugural Crew Flight Test (CFT) – said they embrace from the Florida coast Tuesday at 5:57 pm EDT. Nasa had originally targeted a Splashdown on Wednesday. But after the meeting with Spacex, whose spatial birth Dragon will serve as a tour of Wilmore and Williams, the officials have established that the weather conditions are more favorable for a return on Tuesday.
NASA began the live coverage of the trip on Monday at 10:45 pm EDT, when Wilmore, Williams, the astronaut of Nasa Nick Hague and Roscosmos Cosmonout Aleksandr Gorbunov enter the dragon capsule and closes the hatch. Hague and Gorbunov arrived at the ISS in November as part of the spacex downsized mission, which flew with two crews instead of four to make room for the Starliner duo. All four participated in the ISS shipment of NASA 72.
NASA’s live streaming captured Dragon’s non-muartì at 1: 05 EDT before moving on to an audio only feed. If the weather conditions in the Splash Down positions are clear, the video coverage will resume at 16:45 EDT. Dragon should perform an deorbit burn at 5:11 pm in preparation for a landing just before 18:00 EDT.
Following Splashdown, Sarah Walker, director of Dragon Mission Management for Spacex, will join a trio of NASA officials for a press conference returning to Earth at 19:30 Edt.
Wilmore and Williams’ extensive stay has been the subject of disputes, with some observers – including the SPACEX ELON MUSK CEO and President Donald Trump – which describe astronauts as blocked or abandoned.
For example, Musk said that Spacex offered NASA a mission profile that would return first Wilmore and Williams, but was rejected because “they didn’t want a positive print for someone who supported Trump”. The current NASA and ex high -ranking officials denied receiving this offer.
In reality, many factors are at stake in the return of astronauts. Boeing is developing Starliner as an alternative to the Spacex dragon to give NASA a second option to rotate the crews of the astronauts to the ISS. The CFT was to be the final stay of the space vehicle before the NASA approved it for those missions, and the space agency had hoped that it completed the test flight rather than modifying the busy program of the station. An previous return would not have been as simple as sending a dragon to “go and get” astronauts, as Trump suggested in January, because Starliner was parked where the vehicle would attract.
After the engineers have discovered the losses of helium and defective engines on Starliner, NASA and Boeing led extensive tests on the ground and in orbit to determine whether it was safe for Wilmore and Williams. In the end, the space vehicle returned in September without a crew and Crew-9 was modified to make room for their return to February. Delays to the mission of the crew-10, launched on Friday with their substitutes, pushed that temporal sequence to march.
“If you help us change rhetoric, help us change the narrative, change it in” prepared and busy, “said Wilmore to the CNN during a February interview.” This is what we prefer. “
A version of this story appeared originally Fly.
