NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams wave as they prepare to depart and board a Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft from the Neil A. Armstrong Operations Checkout Building at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on June 5.
Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/AFP via Getty Images
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Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/AFP via Getty Images
Think you have tough travel memories? Millions of Americans have this summer, but the plight of Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams is hard to top in any sense of the word.
The astronauts were scheduled to blast off into space aboard the Boeing Starliner spacecraft on June 5 and spend about a week in orbit around the International Space Station. As of today, they have been orbiting Earth for 52 days.
Just before launch, NASA unloaded a load of clothes and other personal items because they needed space to install a new pump to recycle liquid waste into drinking water. Think about that as you sip your morning coffee.
Sure, your spacesuit might get a little rumpled after a week, but who’s going to see you — ET? Plus, you’ll be home soon. Oh, wait…
Boeing’s Starliner suffered a helium leak and thruster failure during its first flight to the ISS. The spacecraft’s onboard batteries have a 90-day lifespan, and engineers are running out of time to diagnose and repair the problem before astronauts can return aboard the Starliner.
To be clear, Williams and Wilmore are not being left behind. They are staying with other astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station. If Starliner can’t return to Earth, the astronauts may have to return aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, another embarrassment for Boeing.
Williams and Wilmore can handle changes in plans: They’re both military and astronaut veterans, with Williams having completed seven spacewalks.
But this weekend, it’s tempting to imagine the space-set sitcoms the studio might currently be planning, like Nine’s Company: “When their spaceship explodes and two astronauts can’t get home, they end up sleeping on the International Space Station. But wait, who has a Hello Kitty toothbrush?”
Or the Netflix romantic comedy Lost and Found: “Two astronauts are trapped on the International Space Station. Jordan is neat and methodical; Drew is scatterbrained and impulsive. Jordan listens to Mozart; Drew loves Nicki Minaj. Jordan reads James Joyce and Marcel Proust; Drew looks up ramen recipes on TikTok. But as they orbit Earth 3,000 times, their eyes meet through the module and they see each other floating in the starlight. And…”
