They were due to return to Earth on June 14. Then the 18th, and the 22nd. Finally, the return of Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore with the Starliner capsule is set for June 25. Unless further postponement. But for these two astronauts, staying on board the ISS for a few more days is not likely to shake them up.
Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore will have to be patient. The two astronauts will stay a few more days aboard the International Space Station (ISS). In a progress update shared on June 18, NASA and Boeing changed the return date of the Starliner capsule, which should bring them back to Earth.
The spacecraft is now scheduled to undock on June 25, for a landing in New Mexico (United States) on June 26. Starliner must finish its race at White Sands Space Harbor, a launch and return base used by the American space agency (Nasa). The area once served as a landing strip for the Space Shuttle.
On June 5, Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore left Earth towards the ISS, for a stay which was initially supposed to last a week – the return was planned for June 14. But, once on board the ISS (the outward journey took a day, with docking on June 6), the date was shifted little by little, notably to June 18, then June 22.
Veterans accustomed to long flights
If the departure date is kept at June 25, the two astronauts will have remained on board the ISS for around twenty days (and even a little more, if we add the duration of transport, both outward and return). It will be almost triple what was imagined by NASA. However, this is not likely to frighten Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore.
The two astronauts are not blues. Sunita Williams has already completed several stays aboard the ISS, for a cumulative time of more than 335 days in space (including her current mission). She also carried out seven spacewalks. Barry Wilmore is approaching 200 days in space and has four spacewalks.
Suffice to say that the two Starliner test pilots are experienced astronauts who know the space environment very well. They are also experienced in long stays on the ISS. After all, the typical length of a stay at the station is six months. So, a visit of around twenty days is like a brief interlude.
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