The space station is, after all, an orbiting laboratory, and the astronauts’ job is to conduct scientific experiments and maintain the station. Now that there are two extra sets of hands, the work, including the more tedious tasks (yes, even some toilet maintenance), is divided among the nine astronauts on board, living in a ship the length of a football field and with the living space of a Boeing 747.
Williams and Wilmore arrived at the space station on June 6 for a mission that was supposed to last about eight days, but as of Friday, it had lasted 51 days. The delay was caused by the fact that during the approach to the station, five of the spacecraft’s thrusters suddenly shut down and the spacecraft also experienced a series of small but persistent helium leaks in its propulsion system. Since then, Boeing and NASA engineers have been conducting tests to determine what happened and to ensure the spacecraft can safely return Wilmore and Williams.
At a briefing Thursday, NASA officials still couldn’t say when that would happen. They said Starliner was likely still healthy enough to bring the crew home, but that decision would be made during a thorough review, involving top NASA and Boeing leaders, that could be scheduled as early as next week.
But they have repeatedly said that the astronauts are not stranded and that in the event of an emergency they could return home aboard the Starliner. SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, which has been carrying astronauts to the space station for NASA since 2020, could be used as a backup if needed, NASA officials said.
The mission is Starliner’s first flight with people on board, a test to see how the spacecraft performs before NASA allows a full contingent of four astronauts to fly to the space station for stays of up to six months.
Despite their bumpy ride to the space station, the astronauts said this month that they have full confidence in Starliner and are enjoying their extended stay in space, where they can stay in touch with friends and family back home. Wilmore, 61, is a retired Navy captain and fighter pilot from Tennessee who is married with two daughters. Williams, 58, is from Massachusetts and is also a retired Navy captain, where she served as a helicopter pilot. She is married and enjoys spending time with the family dogs.
“We’ve been very busy here, integrating with the crew,” Williams said during a briefing with reporters. “It’s like coming home. It’s nice to be floating. It’s nice to be in space and working here with the International Space Station team. So yeah, it’s great to be here.”
Wilmore added: “It’s a great place to live, a great place to work.”
Since arriving at the station, they have used an ultrasound machine to scan their veins to gather data on how space affects the human body. Williams has worked on studies that looked at “using microgravity to make higher quality optical fibers” than can be made on Earth. She has also worked on a study that uses “fluid physics, such as surface tension, to overcome the lack of gravity when feeding and watering plants grown in space.”
In addition to science, there are tasks to be done, such as “maintenance work that’s been pending for a while, things that have been planned for a while,” Williams said.
So they were tasked, like the arms of a crew at sea, with taking inventory of the station’s food supplies. They replaced a urine-processing pump. Wilmore, a handyman who builds tables and sheds for his church, was tasked with maintaining a pair of freezers used to store research samples as well as filling the coolant loops for one of the station’s water pumps.
They even had a bit of a scare. Last month, all the astronauts had to rush to their respective spacecraft because a satellite broke up at an altitude near the space station, posing a potential threat. Williams and Wilmore jumped aboard Starliner and began preparing to undock in case debris from the satellite crashed into the station, forcing them to evacuate. In the end, the debris passed without incident and the crew resumed operations.
Weightlessness is a joy, especially after astronauts have adapted and are able to fly around the station without difficulty. “Gravity is a horror,” veteran NASA astronaut Sandy Magnus once said.
But despite the wonders of zooming around the globe at 17,500 mph, seeing a sunrise every 90 minutes, and seeing entire continents in your field of vision, space can get tiring. Even the most seasoned astronauts get homesick. The station can feel cramped. Going to the bathroom, a delicate procedure that involves suction, is unpleasant. And the lack of gravity leaves astronauts with a constant feeling of congestion due to the movement of fluids in their bodies.
“I think the ideal space mission is probably about a month because that gives you enough time to start feeling normal, and then you go home,” Scott Kelly, the former NASA astronaut who spent nearly a year aboard the space station, said in an interview.
Having more personnel on board the station means that food supplies will run out faster and the systems designed to remove carbon dioxide from the space station’s air will have to work harder. “They’re going to put a little more strain on that system,” Kelly said. “On the other hand, there are four more hands doing more work. And there always seems to be a lot of work to do up there. So that’s a positive.”
Astronauts are trained for all sorts of scenarios, he explained, especially when things go wrong. And ground crews work tirelessly behind the scenes to keep the astronauts safe.
“They have our lives in their hands and they’re very professional,” Kelly said. “It’s spaceflight, it’s risky, it’s dangerous. There can be problems. But you have to trust the equipment and the people, and I’m sure they’ll do well.”
NASA has extended astronauts’ stays on the space station before. In 2022, a massive leak occurred on the Russian spacecraft that had carried NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and two Russian cosmonauts to the station, forcing Russia to send a rescue ship to bring them home. As a result, Rubio’s planned six-month stay was doubled, earning him the record for the longest continuous stay in space by an American: 371 days.
At first, he said, the extension was difficult. “It was difficult because you knew you were going to be away from your family longer than you expected,” he told NPR. “But you also knew they were making the right decision for our safety. … And so once you got over the initial shock and surprise, you focused on how to make the best of it and make sure the mission was accomplished.”
His time in space has allowed him to truly adapt, he said, and learn how to better live and work in a weightless environment. He has been, he told Space.com, “incredibly fortunate to be able to take the lessons from those experiences and put them into practice right away. A lot of people have to wait five, six, 10 years (for a second mission) before they can put the things they’ve just learned into practice.”
Before their flight aboard Starliner, Wilmore and Williams had waited years to return to space. Both are veterans of two previous spaceflights, with more than 500 days in space between them, and were eager to get going again.
Before the flight, Williams said in an interview that she knew that because it was a test flight, she and Wilmore might have to improvise. “We anticipate that everything will go as planned,” she said. “But if it doesn’t, we’ll take a moment to analyze it and discuss it, and everything will be fine. So we have a lot of confidence in the mission.”
She added: “I’m not complaining about the fact that we’re here for a few more weeks.”