Rescue ship for two astronauts “stuck” in orbit arrives at Space Station | Science

The Crew 9 mission arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) with just two astronauts on Sunday evening at 23:32 Spanish Peninsular time, after taking off from Cape Canaveral (Florida, USA) on Saturday afternoon. What should have been an ordinary flight with four crew members turned into something extraordinary. Due to problems with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that carried two other astronauts to the space station, NASA decided to keep them there until the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft – the same one that just docked to the ISS – could return them to the space station. , which is planned for February 2025.

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, the US space agency astronauts who flew the first Starliner test flight in June, which was scheduled to remain on the ISS for just eight days, are now part of the Crew 9 mission. This is the ninth commercial flight that SpaceX has offered to NASA since 2020 to renew the crew of the International Space Station, which regularly carries four astronauts who spend six months there and return to Earth after six months. The Starliner accident completely changed these plans.

First, the mission, originally scheduled for August 18, was delayed due to numerous minor propulsion system problems discovered on Starliner during its flight to the ISS. Crew-9 Boeing had to wait for the ship’s return, which was delayed several times over the summer while the space agency and the airline company analyzed the cause of the problems. Until NASA decided in late August that Williams and Wilmore would remain on the station and the Starliner would return empty amid intense tensions with Boeing.

Given its return date of February 2025, Crew 9 has reduced its duration to five months. Moreover, in order to accommodate the astronauts stranded on the ISS on the return trip, she had to reduce the exit crew from four to two people. American Nick Haig and Russian Alexander Gorbunov, who entered the space station after 1:00 a.m. on Sunday, retained their place. There are two women left on the ground: Zena Cardman and Stephanie Williams, who were supposed to be the mission commander and specialist, and now they will have to wait for a new opportunity to cope with the huge task of spending six months working on the ISS. .

Two astronauts from the original crew gave up their seats to Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who had previously made long stays on the ISS and did not plan to repeat this experience. Both were involved in the research and operational activities of the orbital complex, and although they were initially planning to spend only one week on the space station, they would end up spending eight months if their return did not suffer further delays.

Despite Boeing’s insistence that both astronauts be returned to their Starliner, the ship returned without a crew on September 7. He landed softly and without incident at the White Sands space base (New Mexico, USA); and two days later, after analyzing all the data from the return flight, NASA admitted that Wilmore and Williams would have arrived safely inside the space capsule: “If we had a crew on board, we would have followed the same sequence of separation of the ISS, the same ignition of the engines for recovery ship from orbit and the same entry into the atmosphere. So it would be a safe and successful landing,” Steve Stich, director of NASA’s commercial human flight program, said at a press conference.

SpaceX rocket error after launch

However, after tests conducted over the summer both on the Starliner and on the ground with engines identical to theirs, Boeing’s computer models – to simulate the ship’s fuel degradation during reentry – have not completely convinced the POT. The US space agency saw limitations and uncertainties in these models and felt that astronauts might be exposed to too much risk. After the ship returned without problems, there was hope that Boeing would maintain a program of regular commercial flights to the ISS on its Starliners. NASA is due to release in the coming months the changes it is requesting from the company to avoid further problems, as well as the date when Starliner will be able to fly again. It is currently ruled out that this will happen before the summer of 2025, which would add another year to the project’s long list of delays.

And, at least until that date, SpaceX, Elon Musk’s aerospace company, will have no competition for the private transportation services it offers to NASA to the International Space Station. While all human flights in Dragon capsules have been successful, there have been a few minor problems with the Falcon 9 rockets that launch them in recent months. The latest was on Saturday: after the launch of the Crew 9 mission, the rocket’s upper stage – it is what gives the Dragon the final push to launching it into orbit – it performed its function properly, but then fell into the ocean outside the area planned for it. For this reason, SpaceX has decided to suspend launches of Falcon 9 rockets until it knows why the failure occurred. This is the third time in the past three months that these rockets have been grounded, without which the private company cannot launch more Starlink satellites or manned missions.

Record of persistence in space

Today, the only alternative to Musk’s Dragon ships are the Russian Soyuz ships. In one of them, two Roscosmos cosmonauts Nikolai Chub and Oleg Kononenko returned to Earth a week ago, along with NASA astronaut Tracy K. Dyson. Chub and Kononenko broke the record for the longest mission on the ISS – 375 days; And if you add them to four previous stays, Kononenko became the first person to spend more than 1,000 days in space.

With the departure of Soyuz MS-25 with these three crew members, Expedition 72 to the International Space Station officially began, under the command of Sunita Williams, one of two Starliner astronauts no longer here. trapped in space: they have their own place on the ship and, finally, a compatible spacesuit for return. Until today, they would have had to return without a suit on the Dragon ship in the event of an emergency on the ISS.

Four more NASA employees and three Roscosmos cosmonauts remained with them. Now, with the arrival of the American Hague and the Russian Gorbunov as part of the SpaceX Crew-9 mission, a total of 11 people live on the ISS. But that will only last a few hours until the Crew 8 mission returns to Earth this Monday or Tuesday with its four crew members. After that, after a summer of uncertainty and disrupted plans, new astronauts are scheduled to travel to the station no earlier than February 2025, who will take the place of the astronauts. trapped Williams and Wilmore and their two new comrades who had just arrived.