Nine months. Two hundred and seventy days more than the original plan. That's the extra time that Butch Wilmore e Suni Williams They spent the day orbiting 400km above Earth, watching it rotate beneath them while their transport (Boeing's Starliner capsule) was declared unreliable and sent home empty. The Crew-10 mission, which launched Friday evening after two failed attempts, represents their escape route, their long-awaited passage back home.
It is not a dramatic rescue mission like in the movies, but a normal rotation that however takes on extraordinary contours for those who have been waiting too long.
Crew-10, a launch awaited for days
Third time lucky: after two failed attempts (the first due to a problem with the hydraulic system, the second due to adverse weather conditions) the rocket Falcon 9 di SpaceX has finally taken off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It was 19:04 p.m. on Friday, March 14, when the engines began to push the four astronauts of the Crew-10 mission upwards: Nicholas Ayers e Anne McClain of NASA, Kirill Peskov of Roscosmos and Takuya Onishi of the Japanese Space Agency.
If all goes according to plan, the capsule Dragon will dock with the International Space Station at 23:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 15, finally allowing the procedures for the return home of Wilmore and Williams to begin.
A forced stay
I smile bitterly when I think that what was supposed to be a mission of just eight days turned into a stay of almost 300 consecutive days. Wilmore and Williams had arrived at the ISS on June 5, 2024 with the first crewed test flight of Boeing's Starliner. But immediately after entering orbit, a series of technical problems (five helium leaks and five failures of the reaction control system thrusters) compromised the reliability of the capsule.
We went prepared to stay a long time, even though we had planned to stay a short time. That’s what we do in human spaceflight. That’s what the human spaceflight program is about: planning for the unexpected and the unexpected contingencies. And we did that.
These words Wilmore during a press conference broadcast from the ISS on March 4. Words that reveal the professionalism and resilience of these veteran astronauts, but which cannot hide the frustration for a situation that has transformed a short test mission into a forced stay.
The return home
After a handover ceremony from Crew-9 to Crew-10, Wilmore and Williams, along with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and to the cosmonaut of Roscosmos Alexander Gorbunov, will return home aboard the already docked Crew-9 capsule, scheduled for departure on March 19.
We can't wait to welcome back these wretched Boeing "castaways."
