A pair of US astronauts stuck for more than nine months on the International Space Station will be returned to Earth on Tuesday evening, Nasa has said.
Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Suni Williams are to be transported home with another American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon craft, which arrived at the ISS early on Sunday.
The stranded duo have been on the ISS since June, after the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they were testing on its maiden crewed voyage suffered propulsion issues and was deemed unfit to fly them back to Earth.
Officially, no, but I bet they’ve had some choice words about Boeing executives in their private communications, and “stranded” would likely have been the least extreme terminology used.
Unlikely.
Both Butch and Suni are seasoned astronauts, and they were certainly aware of the risks of flying a new Boeing craft.
Their return now is something that has been planned ever since NASA decided to bring the capsule back empty, way back in September.