NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have spoken publicly for the first time since the Boeing Starliner departed from the International Space Station (ISS) without them. In a news conference from the ISS held Friday, the pair spoke about dealing with the uncertainty around whether they could fly home on the Starliner and the adjustment from what they expected to be an eight-day mission to staying on the space station for eight months.
“It was trying at times. There were some tough times, all the way through,” Wilmore said. “As the commander and [pilot] of your spacecraft, you don’t want to see it go off without you. But that’s where we wound up.”
He also spoke about seeing the concern expressed by the media and the public for their well-being. “I want everyone to know how much we appreciate that. The concern for us specifically is very heartwarming,” Wilmore said.
Williams said they were adjusting well to life on the space station, and as both are mechanically inclined they are finding plenty of ways to help around the station with maintenance and repair. She also spoke about getting familiar with the Crew Dragon currently docked at the ISS, which is similar to the vehicle that they will eventually travel home in. “We’re excited to fly in two different spacecraft,” she said. “We’re testers, that’s what we do.”
Asked if he felt let down by Boeing over the issues with Starliner, Wilmore said he did not. “Absolutely not,” he said. “Before we launched, we said we were going to find things. That is the nature of tests. Every single test flight, especially a first flight of a spacecraft or an aircraft that has ever occurred, has found issues. 90% of out training is preparing for the unexpected.”
The pair will be staying on the International Space Station until early next year, when they will be traveling home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon along with other members of the Crew-9 mission.
Soon, Williams will be taking over as commander of the space station, which is entering a particularly busy period. There are currently nine previous crew members on the ISS including Williams and Wilmore, with three more people who arrived this week — two Russian cosmonauts and one NASA astronaut who traveled on a Russian Soyuz craft.
In addition to those 12 people on the ISS, there are also three Chinese astronauts on China’s Tiangong space station, plus four members of the SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission who are aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft, two of whom recently made the world’s first commercial spacewalk.
That brings the total number of people currently in space to 19, which is a record over the previous total of 17.