Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule will return from its check flight and not using a crew. Credit score: NASA
When NASA introduced Aug. 24 that Boeing Starliner astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Suni Williams will stay in house one other six months, miss Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Yr holidays with their households, and land in a distinct spacecraft, it stirred headlines worldwide. However theirs shouldn’t be the primary mission to be unexpectedly lengthened or hit by unexpected circumstances.
What occurred to Boeing Starliner?
Launched on June 5 from Cape Canaveral House Pressure Station in Florida, Starliner’s Crew Flight Check (CFT) sought to guage the capabilities of the Boeing-built craft earlier than NASA certifies it for normal Worldwide House Station (ISS) astronaut rotation missions. It was scheduled to spend eight days on the ISS then return Wilmore and Williams to a parachute-aided homecoming within the western United States.
However shortly after liftoff, Starliner suffered a number of helium leaks and response management system thruster failures. With a number of thrusters critically sited on its disposable service module (which can deplete at mission’s finish), NASA and Boeing repeatedly prolonged the flight to carry out extra exams and collect extra knowledge.
Days turned to weeks and weeks turned months as testing and data-gathering happened in house and on Earth. The astronauts assessed Starliner’s habitability and performance. The helium leaks slowly stabilized. And at White Sands in New Mexico, a Starliner thruster was rigorously test-fired to evaluate its efficiency and perceive attainable causes of the thruster failures in orbit.
Nevertheless it was not sufficient. On Aug. 24, NASA opted to return Starliner to Earth empty and hold the astronauts on the ISS till February. In a press convention, Steve Stich, supervisor of NASA’s Industrial Crew Program, stated that “the underside line” was that “there was simply an excessive amount of uncertainty” in how the thrusters would behave. Wilmore and Williams’ homebound journey will as an alternative be SpaceX’s four-seat Dragon Freedom, scheduled to launch on Sept. 24 with two crew members and a pair of empty seats. It’s scheduled to return to Earth — with Wilmore and Williams aboard — in February 2025.
House ride-swapping
Over the a long time, it has change into a typical observe for crew to return to Earth in a distinct spacecraft than the one which took them to house.
The primary occasion got here in January 1969 when, in a bid to seize a number of the highlight from the U.S. Moon-orbiting Apollo 8 weeks earlier, the Soviet Union achieved the primary docking of two spacecraft. Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov piloted Soyuz 4 to rendezvous with Soyuz 5’s Boris Volynov, Alexei Yeliseyev, and Yevgeni Khrunov. After the 2 craft docked, Yeliseyev and Khrunov spacewalked over to Soyuz 4 and returned to Earth with Shatalov whereas Volynov landed alone.
From 1978, cosmonauts routinely swapped Soyuz capsules as visiting crews to the house stations Salyut 6, Salyut 7, and Mir left recent ships to be used by long-duration resident crews, then returned house in older ships approaching the tip of their operational lifetimes.
And after 1995, Soyuz cosmonauts started launching or touchdown on house shuttles and shuttle astronauts by way of Soyuz. Norm Thagard turned the primary American to launch and land in numerous ships — using a Soyuz to Mir, then touchdown on shuttle Atlantis. Between 1997 and 2009, a number of flyers launched to house on one member of NASA’s shuttle fleet and returned on one other.
Stranded by the shuttle
However missions lengthened by unexpected elements are rarer.
A notable character on the Aug. 24 Starliner announcement was Ken Bowersox, NASA’s affiliate administrator for house operations. A former astronaut who flew 4 shuttle missions and commanded the ISS, he is aware of a factor or two about getting stranded removed from house.
On Feb. 1, 2003, Bowersox was halfway by way of a four-month stint aboard the ISS on the helm of Expedition 6, partnered with Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin and NASA astronaut Don Pettit. The crew deliberate to return house in mid-March aboard the house shuttle Atlantis. Days earlier, they made a ship-to-ship name with shuttle Columbia, flying the STS-107 microgravity analysis mission.
Because the ISS flew over Ukraine and Columbia soared excessive above Brazil, Bowersox and STS-107 commander Rick Husband exchanged pleasantries for a couple of minutes.
“Glad to see you guys made it into orbit,” stated Bowersox.
“We’re actually excited to have the ability to discuss to you guys,” replied Husband. “One large house lab to a different large previous house lab on that lovely station of yours.”
However Columbia would disintegrate throughout reentry on Feb. 1, 2003, killing her complete crew, grounding the shuttle fleet and stalling building of the half-built ISS.
“My first response was pure shock,” Bowersox stated 11 days later. “I used to be numb and it was laborious to imagine what we had been experiencing was actually occurring.”
Mission Management adjusted Expedition 6’s schedule, furnishing the crew a while for reflection. “If you’re up right here for this lengthy, you may’t simply bottle up your feelings and focus all the time,” stated Bowersox. “Every of us had an opportunity to shed some tears.”
With shuttles indefinitely grounded, getting Bowersox’s crew home proved problematic. An unoccupied ISS was hardly preferrred however with out common shuttle visits regular operations had been untenable. Two-person caretaker crews on six-month excursions would hold the station useful till the shuttle returned to flight.
The primary such crew arrived in April and Expedition 6 got here house on Could 6 — making Bowersox and Pettit the primary Individuals to launch on a U.S. shuttle and land in a Russian Soyuz. At 161 days, their tragedy-tinged voyage ran 30 % longer than deliberate.
Different prolonged stays
Bowersox and Pettit weren’t the primary to expertise a big hike of their mission’s period. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, tanks rumbled into Moscow’s streets and Russia’s tricolor flag changed the hammer and sickle fluttering over the Kremlin. And two cosmonauts had been conscious about their once-proud nation’s crumbling future.
One in all them, Sergei Krikalev, launched to Mir in Could and was due house in October. However with the Baikonur launch base situated in Kazakhstan, Russia feared the newly impartial Kazakh authorities would possibly nationalize or refuse entry to it. To placate them, a Kazakh visitor cosmonaut was rapidly added to the October Soyuz mission, forcing Krikalev to drag a double-length Mir mission of ten months.
In 1996, NASA’s Shannon Lucid noticed her personal four-month Mir keep protracted to 6 months resulting from shuttle launch delays. Her mission grew from 140 to 188 days, the longest ever flown by a lady. However Lucid additionally missed her son’s twenty first birthday — illustrating spaceflight’s unpredictable influence on households.
Different missions had been additionally lengthened. Notably, in 1998 and 1999 Russian cosmonaut Sergei Avdeyev spent 379 days on Mir — twice his authentic flight size. And all through the ISS period, mission failures, altering circumstances and launch delays saved a number of crews in house far longer than supposed.
In 2017, a lowered variety of Russian cosmonauts on the ISS led NASA to increase astronaut Peggy Whitson’s six-month keep to 9.5 months, a brand new report for ladies. And Christina Koch, launched for a six-month keep in early 2019, relinquished her Soyuz return seat that fall to a visiting astronaut from the United Arab Emirates. Koch returned to Earth in early 2020 after 11 months — one other report for ladies.
Extra just lately, in 2021 and 2022 the six-month mission of Mark Vande Hei and Pyotr Dubrov was doubled to 355 days. Vande Hei later remarked that caring for his psychological well being proved critically vital in getting by way of the flight.
And throughout 2022 and 2023, the half-year keep of Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin and U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio doubled to 371 days — the primary year-plus human house mission of the twenty first century. Their prolonged ISS stint arose when a coolant leak rendered their Soyuz capsule unsafe to return to Earth, requiring a substitute ship to be launched to convey them house.
‘Extraordinary sacrifices’
“Our astronauts,” stated NASA Administrator Invoice Nelson, “make extraordinary sacrifices away from their properties and family members to additional discovery.” His rousing phrases are fittingly apt for Wilmore and Williams as their week-long flight morphs to eight months: the most important period hike of any crewed mission in historical past — a staggering 25 instances longer than deliberate on their day of launch.
Regardless of immense sacrifices on their households, there may be no doubting Wilmore and Williams’ steely resolve. Having each flown the shuttle and Soyuz, their Starliner launch and Dragon touchdown collectively will make them the primary people to launch or land in 4 totally different spacecraft sorts. And theirs will sit within the prime 20 longest missions ever flown — including to a corpus of information that sometime will get people to Mars.
