Just a day after the blowup, SpaceX Crew Capsules arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday to provide an alternative to two NASA’s stopped astronauts.
The four newcomers, representing the US, Japan and Russia, will learn station in and out from Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams over the next few days. The two will then tie them down to their own SpaceX capsules later this week to close an unexpected extension mission that began last June.
When it was launched on Boeing’s first astronaut flight, Wilmore and Williams expected it to be just a week. They hit the nine month mark earlier this month.
Boeing’s Starliner capsule encountered so many problems that NASA claimed it would return to the sky, leaving the test pilots to wait for the SpaceX lift.
Their ride arrived in late September, with a reduced crew of two and two empty seats reserved on the backs of their feet. However, when the brand new capsules of replacements needed massive battery repairs, there was more delays. The old capsules were replaced, pushing back up within weeks until mid-March.
With weather allowed, SpaceX capsules carrying Wilmore, Williams and two other astronauts will unlock from the space station earlier than Wednesday and will splash off the coast of Florida.
At a press conference Tuesday, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams spoke for nine months on the International Space Station before returning home.
___
The Associated Press School of Health Sciences is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institution’s Science and Education Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. AP is solely responsible for all content.
Source link
