Last month, NASA decided that Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore would return in February.
Los Angeles, United States:
A U.S. astronaut stuck on the International Space Station said Friday he believes Boeing’s Starliner could have brought him home if more time had been available to fix problems with the beleaguered spacecraft.
Last week, Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams watched the Boeing Starliner they had flown to the ISS on three months earlier return to Earth without them.
“We could have gotten to the point, I think, where we could have gotten back to Starliner, but we just ran out of time,” Wilmore said Friday during a video news conference.
On June 5, Wilmore and Williams launched aboard the Starliner on the spacecraft’s first crewed mission, which was originally scheduled to last eight days in orbit.
After the Starliner encountered several technical problems, its stay is now expected to last eight months.
Last month, NASA decided that Williams and Wilmore would return in February on the Crew-9 flight of SpaceX, Boeing’s aerospace rival.
While Wilmore said he was “absolutely not” disappointed by the decision to stay in space, he said there were “disagreements” over how to handle the return.
“In this case, we found some things that we just couldn’t feel comfortable with going back on the Starliner when we had other options,” Wilmore said.
Williams said she was “so happy” that Starliner landed safely on Earth, even though they weren’t on it.
“We wanted to complete the Starliner and land back home, but you know, you have to turn the page and look at the next opportunity,” she said.
Both astronauts said the support they received helped them transition to the new return schedule.
“I can sum it up in one word: resilience,” Wilmore said. “We are tasked with – and we learn and we train – to handle all types of situations.”
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