Astronauts launched by Boeing are returning to Earth nine months later, in a Spacex ship

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are returning to Earth after nine months at the International Space Station. It is not an unusually long stay for an astronaut (the Russians They have come to spend three times longer in orbit), but Wilmore and Williams originally rose for a test mission just over a week. What followed was one of the most controversial decisions that NASA has taken in recent years. Express rotation Although How Elon Musk and Donald Trump tell himNASA’s two astronauts have not been really abandoned. The Boeing Starliner ship, with which they went up to the ISS in June, returned empty to Earth for a failure in the propulsion system that caused NASA managers to lose confidence in a safe return for their astronauts. Wilmore and Williams were reassigned, first, to the CREW-8 mission of Spacex. If there had been an emergency in the ISS between August and September, they would have returned in that ship under the seats of the other four crew, without the right suit. In September, the CREW-9 mission reached the ISS with two empty seats and two costumes for both, which regularized its situation. Since then, Wilmore and Williams have had a firm return plan: as soon as the four relay astronauts (the Spacex Crew-10 mission), they would return to Earth together with their two companions of the CREW-9 mission. There were some delays for technical issues (the Crew Dragon ship initially assigned to the CREW-10 mission was not ready and had to be replaced), but political tensions ended up accelerating things. Crew-10 arrived at the ISS during the early hours of Monday. 24 hours later, in the early hours of Tuesday, the CREW-9 mission was decoupling to enter the atmosphere and return to the earth. Normally astronauts spend more time together to catch up on the details of the orbital station, but this time it has been an express rotation. The return flight Dressed in their Spacex costumes, very different from those of the Boeing Starliner ship with those who were thrown into space, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams said goodbye to their peers and entered the Crew Dragon ship with Nick Hague of NASA and Aleksandr Gorbunov of Roscosmos, the other two crew of the CREW-9 mission. At 5:05 UTC, the Spacex ship decoupled from the ISS autonomously and quickly moved away from the laboratory in orbit using its propellants. The Crew Dragon has been maneuvering to reduce its altitude. It is expected that Amerize near the Coast of Florida at 9:57 p.m. UTC, 17 hours after its departure. The most delicate maneuver will occur 12 minutes before shocking. The ship will detach from its trunk and turn on its engines to exorbitar. Then he will perform his atmospheric reentry, being surrounded by plasma by the speed at which he will cross the gases of the Earth’s atmosphere. When it reaches 5,500 meters of altitude, the two pilot parachutes will open to stop the ship, followed by four main parachutes to 1,950 meters to cushion the shocking. The Dragon ship will play the Atlantic Ocean at a speed of 7.6 meters per second, detaching from its parachutes and bringing back to Butch and Suni after nine months of scientific work and maintenance aboard the ISS. The soap opera will have finished. Images | POT In Xataka | “Stranded” astronauts in space say goodbye to the ISS with a script turn: supporting Elon Musk’s version

Starliner astronauts will return home 287 days later. Another ship change has forced to modify the plans

NASA has decided to advance the return of the CREW-9 mission and, with it, that of the Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams astronauts, who left for the International Space Station on June 5, 2024 in the Boeing Starliner ship. Despite Elon Musk and Donald Trump messagesreason is not political, but operational. A few days of advance. If new delays on their trip, Butch and Suni will not return will return home on March 19. Taking into account that they were launched to space for a week, it is nine months after planned. But if we stick to The last date that NASA managedastronauts will return with a few days of advance. Context. In June 2024, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams left towards the ISS aboard the Starliner space capsule, Boeing’s alternative to the Crew Dragon ship of Spacex. It was the first manned trip of the Boeing spacecraft, and it was assumed that the last certification test before starting to transport astronauts regularly to the International Space Station. However, shortly after its launch, The Starliner experienced serious problems in its propulsion systemwhich forced to suspend his return. The situation lasted several months until NASA decided that the ship returned empty. This accident left astronauts at the space station and forced NASA to find a different solution for its return. What they are waiting for. Once the destiny of the Starliner, Wilmore and Williams decided, they became part of the permanent crew of the ISS. They work in the experiments in orbit and the maintenance of the station. They have even made space walks: Wilmore has two on this mission, and has become The woman with more hours of extravehicular activity. So that they could return, NASA He booked two empty seats on the Crew-9 mission of Spacex. The Crew Dragon ship in which they will return to Earth has been coupled to the ISS since September Station maintenance. And the CREW-10 mission is not yet ready. Another change of ship. The CREW-10 mission was supposed to take off in a new Crew Dragon ship, called C213, which has not yet flown to space. However, a technical incidence, apparently related to the ship’s batteries, forced to delay its first flight at least until the end of April. Instead of continuing to delay the calendar (and with it, the return of Wilmore and Williams), NASA has opted for a logistics maneuver: Reassign to the CREW-10 mission an already tested shipthe C210 ‘Endurance’, which was preparing to fly with the private axiom-4 mission in spring. Thanks to this ship change, Crew-9’s return not only is not delayed, but is ahead of a few days. New dates. NASA plans to launch the CREW-10 mission on March 12, 2025, which would allow the CREW-9 to return on March 19 with Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board, along with their companions Nick Hague (NASA) and Aleksandr Gorbunov (from the Russian agency Roscosmos). This change of dates responds, as we have seen, to a technical and operational issue, but explains why Elon Musk and Donald Trump published on social networks that Spacex would rescue the two astronauts “abandoned in the ISS” as soon as possible. A propaganda narrative of what was really happening after the curtain. Image | Suni Williams during a space walk (NASA) In Xataka | It is not that Elon Musk has managed to introduce its influence on NASA. Is that he has entered sweeping

Elon Musk says he will rescue the two astronauts stranded in the space at Trump. The problem is that

A incendiary message. “The president of the United States has asked Spacex to bring the two astronauts stranded at the International Space Station as soon as possible,” Elon Musk wrote In his profile of X. “It is terrible that the Biden administration has left them there for so long.” After 20 minutes, more than one million people have seen the message, which Musk apostilled answering “true” to the following answer: “The hatred they had was greater than their desire to rescue those astronauts.” A little context. In June 2024, two astronauts arrived at the International Space Station aboard the Starliner spacecraft, Boeing’s alternative to the Crew Dragon of Spacex. The ship had to spend a week in orbit before returning to Earth, but A failure in the propulsion system During the first leg he made three months undergoing And finally I would go empty. Elon Musk’s X messages about astronauts Elon Musk lies. No one will be surprised at this point that Musk publishes propaganda in his X profile, but the message misrepresent the reality in a particularly fantasy way. While it is true that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are still in space since June, they are not stranded. SPACEX CREW-9 MISSION took off in September 2024long before Trump assumed the presidency, with two empty seats to bring them back. So why do they continue in the ISS? It was the plan provided by NASA. Wilmore and Williams were reallocated to the CREW-9 mission and became part of the permanent crew of the International Space Station. Williams is, in fact, the commander of expedition 72, and He has just taken a space walk As part of your tasks. That NASA did not ask Spacex to look for them immediately has nothing to do with the hatred of Musk, but that there was no crew dragon to immediately available. The most logical solution was to get two astronauts out of the next round trip (the CREW-9 mission) to leave two free seats. And now what? The return of the CREW-9 mission is scheduled for the end of March 2025. So far, the expected thing was that Wilmore and Williams return along with their mission partners, the American Nick Hague and the Russian Aleksandr Gorbunov, in March or maybe in April. But Musk’s message suggests that perhaps his return goes ahead. As for the Starliner, NASA canceled the flight that had hired Boeing By 2025. The two astronaut rotations of this year will be in charge of Spacex while Boeing continues to analyze what could fail in its first manned flight and how it plans to solve it. Images | Steve Jurvetson (CC By 2.0), NASA In Xataka | The Starliner ship is not only a humiliation for Boeing: it is a moneyless money well that will no longer be able to recover

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