{"id":44853,"date":"2024-09-14T20:20:59","date_gmt":"2024-09-14T12:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/navy-captains-dont-like-abandoning-ship-but-with-starliner-the-ship-left-them\/"},"modified":"2024-09-14T20:20:59","modified_gmt":"2024-09-14T12:20:59","slug":"navy-captains-dont-like-abandoning-ship-but-with-starliner-the-ship-left-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/navy-captains-dont-like-abandoning-ship-but-with-starliner-the-ship-left-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Navy captains don\u2019t like abandoning ship\u2014but with Starliner, the ship left them"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are no strangers to time away from their families. Both are retired captains in the US Navy, served in war zones, and are veterans of previous six-month stays on the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

When they launched to the space station on Boeing\u2019s Starliner spacecraft on June 5, the astronauts expected to be home in a few weeks, or perhaps a month, at most. Their minimum mission duration was eight days, but NASA was always likely to approve a short extension. Wilmore and Williams were the first astronauts to soar into orbit on Boeing\u2019s Starliner spacecraft, a milestone achieved some seven years later than originally envisioned by Boeing and NASA.<\/p>\n

However, the test flight fell short of all of its objectives. Wilmore and Williams are now a little more than three months into what has become an eight-month mission on the station. The Starliner spacecraft was beset by problems, culminating in a decision last month by NASA officials to send the capsule back to Earth without the two astronauts. Rather than coming home on Starliner, Wilmore and Williams will return to Earth in February on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.<\/p>\n

Grateful for options<\/h2>\n

On Friday, the two astronauts spoke with reporters for the first time since NASA decided they would stay in orbit until early 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was trying at times,\u201d Wilmore said. \u201cThere were some tough times all the way through. Certainly, as the commander or pilot of your spacecraft, you don\u2019t want to see it go off without you, but that\u2019s where we wound up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both astronauts are veteran Navy test pilots and have previous flights on space shuttles and Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Captains never want to abandon ship, but that\u2019s not what happened with Starliner. Instead, their ship left them.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

Williams said she and Wilmore watched Starliner\u2019s departure from the space station from the lab\u2019s multi-window cupola module last week. They kept busy with several tasks, such as monitoring the undocking and managing the space station\u2019s systems during the dynamic phase of the departure.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were watching our spaceship fly away at that point in time,\u201d Williams said. \u201cI think it\u2019s good we had some extra activities. Of course, we\u2019re very knowledgeable about Starliner, so it was obvious what was happening at each moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s top managers did not have enough confidence in Starliner\u2019s safety after five thrusters temporarily failed as the spacecraft approached the space station in June. They weren\u2019t ready to risk the lives of the two astronauts on Starliner when engineers weren\u2019t convinced the same thrusters, or more, would function as needed during the trip home.<\/p>\n

It turned out the suspect thrusters on Starliner worked after it departed the space station and headed for reentry on September 6. One thruster on Starliner\u2019s crew module\u2014different in design from the thrusters that previously had trouble\u2014failed on the return journey. Investigating this issue is something Boeing and NASA engineers will add to their to-do list before the next Starliner flight, alongside the earlier problems of overheating thrusters and helium leaks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very risky business, and things do not always turn out the way you want,\u201d Wilmore said. \u201cEvery single test flight, especially a first flight of a spacecraft or aircraft that\u2019s ever occurred, has found issues\u2026 90 percent of our training is preparing for the unexpected, and sometimes the actual unexpected goes beyond what you even think could happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

The Starliner capsule safely landed under parachutes in New Mexico one week ago. It was a successful landing but an ending to a disappointing test flight. Williams said NASA made the right decision on Starliner\u2019s safety. She and her crewmates on the space station watched live video on their iPads of Starliner\u2019s landing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was wonderful that it made it back, and the fact that we weren\u2019t on it didn\u2019t even come into mind at all,\u201d Wilmore said. \u201cThe decision was made, we flipped that bit, and we go forward with the plan of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Boeing\u2019s Starliner spacecraft backs away from the International Space Station on September 6 without its crew.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n NASA<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Williams described the space station as her \u201chappy place\u201d but added that she missed her family, friends, and her two dogs. Wilmore said he wasn\u2019t upset with the extra time in orbit, but it\u2019s a different story for the astronauts\u2019 loved ones on the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re here. We\u2019re safe,\u201d Wilmore said. \u201cWe\u2019re in a place that we\u2019re both familiar with and doing things that we actually enjoy doing. For them [our families], it is different, and they\u2019re going to learn from this, and they\u2019re going to grow from this like they never could have from any other situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time an astronaut has stayed in space much longer than initially planned. Most recently, Frank Rubio, another NASA astronaut, had his mission extended from six months to one year in 2023 after the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that was supposed to bring him home sprung a coolant leak. Russian officials decided the damaged Soyuz wasn\u2019t safe enough for humans and launched another Soyuz to rescue Rubio and his crewmates.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re both Navy, we\u2019ve both been on deployments, we\u2019re not surprised when deployments get changed or extended,\u201d Williams said. \u201cOur families are used to that as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two astronauts are settling in as long-term residents on the space station. They are trained to perform spacewalks and maintenance and operate the station\u2019s robotic arm, and they\u2019re getting up to speed on the lab\u2019s scientific experiments. Before Starliner left the space station, the astronauts rigged makeshift seats in a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft currently moored at the outpost, allowing it to come home with six astronauts instead of the regular complement of four. For the next few weeks, that will be the crew\u2019s lifeboat to escape the space station in the event of an emergency.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were very fortunate that we have the space station, and that we had the option to stay and we had the option to come back a different way if that\u2019s what the data showed,\u201d Wilmore said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to contrast the situation with Boeing\u2019s Starliner with another time NASA engineers faced some uncertainty about the health of a spacecraft. In 2003, the space shuttle Columbia<\/em> broke apart on reentry, and its seven-person crew perished. Some NASA engineers worried about the shuttle\u2019s heat shield after a chunk of foam struck Columbia<\/em>\u2018s left wing on launch.<\/p>\n

But there was no way for the shuttle to reach the International Space Station to use it as a safe haven, and NASA managers determined it was not possible to launch another space shuttle to rescue Columbia<\/em>\u2018s crew. Ultimately, they concluded an impact of lightweight foam, even at high speed, couldn\u2019t do any significant damage to the shuttle\u2019s heat shield and approved Columbia<\/em> for its ill-fated reentry.<\/p>\n

This time, NASA had options, and it used them.<\/p>\n

SpaceX will launch another Dragon mission later this month with just two crew members\u2014a NASA commander and a Russian cosmonaut\u2014leaving two empty seats to return Wilmore and Williams to Earth next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got a ride home, and we\u2019re looking forward to the next couple months doing a lot of stuff on the International Space Station,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are no strangers to time away from their families. Both are retired captains in the US Navy, served in war zones, and are veterans of previous six-month stays on the International Space Station. When they launched to the space station on Boeing\u2019s Starliner spacecraft on June 5, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[670,524,291,717,190,1306],"class_list":["post-44853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-boeing","tag-commercial-crew","tag-commercial-space","tag-international-space-station","tag-nasa","tag-starliner"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44853"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}