Imagine going on a week-long business trip and not coming home until next year. That may be the case for American astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, whose eight-day mission to the International Space Station has already stretched to more than two months and is likely to last even longer.
The pair launched to the space station on a test flight of Boeing’s Starliner shuttle on June 5. The plan was for them to return on the same ship eight days later. But helium leaks and problems with the spacecraft’s thrusters led NASA and Boeing to delay the astronauts’ return.
If the pair don’t return to Starliner, they could fly again with another crew of astronauts by launching on a SpaceX Dragon vehicle in September. These astronauts are assigned to a mission that lasts until February of 2025. Williams and Wilmore will join that mission and stay on the space station until February, as well — making their extended stay in space possible. up to eight months.
The situation has prompted headlines and hand-wringing about how the pair got stuck in space. But while nothing in spaceflight is routine, this isn’t the first time humans have been stuck in space for longer than expected.
“This is not unprecedented, to have astronauts on a space station who have a vehicle that they may not be able to return,” says Emily A. Margolis, a curator of contemporary spaceflight at the National Air Museum and Space in Washington. DC
Given the space ambitions of companies and governments around the world, it probably won’t be the last (SN: 6/11/24). However, each time a delay occurs, a different issue or event is blamed.
“The fundamental problem is the same,” says Margolis. “If you have a permanent human presence in space, how do you keep people safe and have a lifeline and a lifeboat, even when there are so many different things that can go wrong?”
An uncrewed mission brought new supplies to the space station on Aug. 4, so the astronauts won’t run out of food or clothes, Margolis says — although the lack of clothes on the space station means they can smell bad.
Like those who missed space before them, Williams and Wilmore are taking their extra space time in stride. “Honestly, the team wanted more time” than the original eight days, NASA flight chief Emily Nelson said at an Aug. 14 press conference. “They’re very integrated members of this crew and they’re always looking for more work to do, honestly. .
“We’re having a great time here on the ISS,” Williams said at a press conference on July 10. “It feels good to float around, it feels good to be in space and work up here…. I’m not complaining.”
Meet some other astronauts whose return flights were delayed (see slideshow). Then read on to find out why—and how the astronauts felt affected by the experience.
Engine failure
Mechanical issues have stranded astronauts in space before.
In 1971, the USSR launched the world’s first space station, called Salyut (SN: 17/7/76). The ninth Salyut mission was launched on a Soyuz spacecraft in April 1979, but never reached the station.
The mission was meant to bring a new crew to the space station and then bring home the cosmonauts aboard Salyut. But the spacecraft’s engine failed shortly after launch.
Fortunately, the Soyuz cosmonauts returned to Earth safely. But the cosmonauts still in orbit, Vladimir Lyakhov and Valery Ryumin, were left without a safe means of return. The Soyuz spacecraft they had arrived in was docked in Salyut, but mission control was worried it would have the same engine problem. That spacecraft was sent away empty.
By the time a new, uncrewed Soyuz vehicle arrived to bring them home, the two cosmonauts had spent a total of 175 days in space—a record at the time. Ryumin went on to fly two more missions, one on a Soyuz in 1980 and one on a NASA spacecraft in 1998, 18 years after he was supposed to have retired.
Geopolitical chaos
When the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev was about four months into a five-month stay aboard the Mir space station. His fate was uncertain. The country that sent him into space no longer existed. The former Soviet cosmodrome, located in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, suddenly came under the control of a newly independent nation. With the chaos on Earth, it was not clear when and how the cosmonaut could return home.
It’s not that there was no way for Krikalev to return to Earth – there was an emergency return capsule. But because Krikalev was the only flight engineer qualified to keep the space station operational, his departure would have spelled the end of Mir.
He ended up staying in space for 311 consecutive days, double the duration of his original mission. He returned to Russia on March 25, 1992.
The ordeal did not dampen Krikalev’s enthusiasm for space. He flew again two years later, in February 1994, as one of the first Russian cosmonauts to fly on a NASA spacecraft. He later became one of the first people to live and work on the International Space Station, marking a new era of Russian and American cooperation in space. (SN: 18.6.04).
The disaster of space flights
On February 1, 2003, NASA’s space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in Earth’s atmosphere minutes before it was scheduled to land. (SN: 2/5/03). All seven astronauts on board died. NASA grounded the entire fleet of shuttles for 2 1/2 years.
The tragedy meant that astronauts on the International Space Station at the time did not have a ride home. Three of them – Don Pettit, Ken Bowersox and Nikolai Budarin – waited on the space station for about two additional months before returning on a Soyuz spacecraft in May 2003.
The three astronauts “were saddened by the reason for the extension,” Pettit later told space historian Frank White, author of the book. Summary Effect. “But the fact that our expedition was extended was very welcome. None of us were ready to go home after two and a half short months.” Pettit is currently NASA’s oldest active astronaut at age 69 and is scheduled to fly back to the space station on a Soyuz spacecraft this September.
Micrometeor impact
A Soyuz spacecraft docked at the International Space Station developed a coolant leak after being hit by a small space rock in December 2022. NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin were stuck on the space station for six months longer than expected and spent more than a year in space in total.
In an echo of the engine failure in 1979, the damaged Soyuz spacecraft returned to Earth with no one on board in March 2023. A replacement Soyuz arrived at the space station in February 2023. But due to the detailed choreography required to maintain budgets and schedules for visits to the space station on track, astronauts continued to work on the station until September.
Rubio spent 370 consecutive days in space, a record for a NASA astronaut, and is still hungry for more. “I absolutely want to come back,” Rubio said time after returning to Earth last year.
As thousands of new satellites accumulate in low Earth orbit, micrometeor impacts may become more problematic. Increased space traffic could also complicate launch and reentry schedules, Margolis says. “Everything has to be in line,” she says. “You have to have clean space to go home to.”
Weather on Earth
The third all-in space mission, Axiom Mission 3, launched four European astronauts to the International Space Station on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on January 18, 2024. The mission was supposed to return to Earth on February 3, but was delayed by several days due to storms near the expected landing site off the coast of Florida. The crew spent 18 days on the space station and landed on February 9.
That crew was not disappointed by the extension either. “More time on @Space_Station = More photos!” Mission Commander Michael Lόpez-Alegría posted on X (formerly Twitter) on February 6.
Despite the inherent dangers, many earth-bound astronauts are eager to return to space, even as they experience terminal flight delays.
“Given the choice of a six-month mission or a one-year mission, I would prefer a one-year mission,” Pettit said in his interview with White. “People think I’m joking, but I’m serious when I say that if we had the technology, I would load my family and myself into the next rocket and we would migrate into space and never return to planet Earth. “
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