CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida, USA (AP) — The replacements for the two astronauts of the NASA stranded at the International Space Station took off on Friday night, paving the way for the rescue of the pair after nine long months.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams need SpaceX to take this relief team to the space station so they can return. Their replacements are expected to arrive on Saturday night.
When would the astronauts stranded at the Space Station return?
NASA wants the two crews to coincide at the ISS so that Wilmore and Williams can inform the newcomers about what has happened on board the orbiting laboratory. This would put them on track for an undocking next week and a splashdown off the coast of Florida, weather permitting.
The duo will be escorted back by astronauts who flew on a rescue mission on SpaceX last September, along with two empty seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams on the return journey.
Reaching orbit from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the new crew includes Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers from NASA, both military pilots, and Takuya Onishi from Japan and Kirill Peskov from Russia, both former airline pilots. They will spend the next six months at the space station, which is considered the standard duration, after releasing Wilmore and Williams.
"Space flights are strong, but humans are stronger," McClain said minutes after the launch.
Why did Wilmore and Williams get stranded?
As test pilots of Boeing’s new Starliner capsule, Wilmore and Williams expected to be out for just a week or so when they took off from Cape Canaveral on June 5th.
A series of helium leaks and thruster failures marred their journey to the space station, triggering a months-long investigation by NASA and Boeing on the best course of action.
Finally, considering that it was not safe, NASA ordered the Starliner to return empty last September and transferred Wilmore and Williams to a SpaceX flight scheduled to return in February.
Their return was further delayed when the new SpaceX capsule required extensive battery repairs to be able to bring their replacements. In order to save a few weeks, SpaceX switched to a used capsule, moving up Wilmore and Williams' return to mid-March.
The unexpectedly long mission, which has captured worldwide attention, took a political turn when U.S. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, promised earlier this year to accelerate the return of the astronauts and blamed the previous government for delaying it.
On their part, Wilmore and Williams, retired Navy captains who have previously lived on the space station, have emphasized on several occasions that they support the decisions made by their NASA bosses since last summer.
Both helped keep the station running - they repaired a broken toilet, watered the plants, and conducted experiments - and even went on a spacewalk together. With nine spacewalks, Williams set a new record for women: the most time spent walking in space throughout a career.
A last-minute hydraulic issue delayed Wednesday’s initial launch attempt. Concerns arose about one of the two hold-down arms on the Falcon rocket support structure that needed to be tilted before liftoff. SpaceX subsequently purged the arm’s hydraulic system, eliminating the trapped air.