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To say astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore have gotten more than they bargained for during their visit to the International Space Station (ISS) would be an understatement.
Williams and Wilmore, both former Navy test pilots, were only supposed to be on the International Space Station for eight days. It has now been well over a month.
Problems began for the astronauts right away, before they even docked the Boeing Starliner with the ISS.
“Launch was spectacular,” Wilmore said live from the ISS on Wednesday. “I mean, truly amazing.”
The real problems began on day two of the mission.
“The start of day 2 was the same starting off, and then we did have some failures as we are all aware,” he revealed. “We lost an RCS [reaction control system] jet, then we lost another one. And then you could tell the thrust, the control, the capability was degraded. The handling qualities were not the same.”
After taking over manual control of the spacecraft, Wilmore said, “From that point on you could tell that the thrust was degraded. At the time we didn’t know why.”
The docking of the Starliner with the ISS went smoothly, however. Then they discovered a helium leak which is preventing them from returning on board craft.
Back here on Earth, scientists and engineers continue to do testing and troubleshooting that is expected to be completed by the end of the week.
“We’ve been through a lot of simulations,” Williams continued. “I feel confident that if we had to — if there was a problem with the International Space Station — we could get in our spacecraft, we could undock, talk to our team and figure out the best way to come home.”
Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, added, “I think some of the data suggest optimistically maybe it’s by the end of July, but we’ll just follow the data each step at a time and at the right time figure out when the right undock opportunity is.”
In the meantime, Williams and Wilmore, who were originally supposed to return to Earth on June 14, are performing various maintenance tasks and working on scientific projects.
“We are having a great time here on ISS,” said Williams. “Butch and I have been up here before and it feels like coming back home. It feels good to float around, it feels good to be in space and work up here with the International Space Station team. So I’m not complaining, Butch is not complaining that we’re here for a couple of extra weeks.”