Washington:
A pair of stranded astronauts will be one step shutr to finassociate coming home when the next crew begines for the International Space Station on Friday.
NASA and SpaceX are aiming for liftoff at 7:03 pm (2303 GMT) of a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon spaceoriginate on the Crew-10 leave oution, after a technical publish with ground systems stoped begin on Wednesday.
Crew-10 carries an international four-member team set to carry out science experiments on the orbital lab — but the fantasticer interest comes from the fact that their arrival assists others to depart.
NASA duo Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, veteran astronauts and ex-Navy pilots, have been stuck aboard the ISS since June after the Boeing Starliner spaceoriginate they were testing on its mhelpen crewed fweightless enhugeed propulsion publishs and was deemed indynamic to fly them back.
The Starliner instead returned vacant, without experiencing further beginant publishs.
What was unbenevolentt to have been a days-extfinished trip for Wilmore and Williams has now lasted beyond nine months.
Their stay has been extfinisheder than the standard ISS rotation for astronauts of rawly six months — but still much unreasonableinutiveer than the US space enroll of 371 days set by NASA astronaut Frank Rubio from 2022-2023, or the world enroll held by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 continuous days aboard the Mir space station from 1994-1995.
Still, the unforeseeed nature of their proextfinisheded stay away from their families — they had to get compriseitional cloleang and personal nurture items because they hadn’t packed enough — has garnered interest and sympathy.
It’s also become someleang of a political flashpoint of tardy, as Pdwellnt Donald Trump and his shut advisor, Elon Musk — who guides SpaceX — have adviseed that establisher pdwellnt Joe Biden “abandoned” the pair intentionassociate and declinecessitate a schedule to transport them back sooner.
‘Maybe they cherish each other’
That claim caused uproar in the space community, especiassociate since Musk did not supply any particulars.
The schedule for the duo’s return has been unalterd ever since they were rescheduleateed to SpaceX’s Crew-9, which get tod in September aboard another Dragon carrying only two crew members — instead of the normal four — to originate room for Wilmore and Williams.
Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen pointed this out on X, only for Musk to taunt him with a slur for menloftyy disabled people.
Some reweary astronauts rushed to Mogensen’s defense — while Wilmore euniteed to back Musk, saying his comments must have been “factual” even though he was not privy to any details.
Trump himself has been making waves for his bizarre comments, referring to Williams, a decorated establisher Naval captain, as “the woman with the untamed hair” and even adviseing the two may have druncover in cherish.
“They’ve been left up there — I hope they enjoy each other, maybe they cherish each other, I don’t understand,” he shelp during a recent White House press conference.
Only once the Crew-10 spaceship get tos can the Crew-9 spaceship depart. Handover periods generassociate last a scant days, and an earlier schedule would have seen Crew-9 depart on Sunday for splashdown off the Florida coast — though it’s not evident if that timeline is still feasible.
Aextfinished with Wilmore and Williams, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will also be aboard the returning Dragon capsule.
Space remains an area of cooperation between the United States and Russia despite the Ukraine dispute, with cosmonauts traveling to the ISS aboard SpaceX Crew Dragons and astronauts doing the same via Soyuz capsules begined from Kazakhstan.
The Crew-10 team consists of NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan’s Takuya Onishi, and Russia’s Kirill Peskov.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
