They have finally returned to Earth, after 286 days astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore have returned to Earth, along with astronauts Nick Hague and Russian Aleksandr Gorbunov, they have returned to Earth that is the important thing, the ship landed on the coast of Florida at 17:57 minutes Eastern Time in the United States on Tuesday, March 18.
This is one of the most controversial missions in recent years, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were the astronauts who tested the Starliner ships, the Starliner ship designed by Boing that should have been the competition for SpaceX's manned dragon ship, the Starliner was launched in its first manned test on June 5, 2024 and its destination was the international space station, because basically both the Manned Dragon and the Starliner were what is called space taxis, ships that carry crew and some cargo to the international space station or any other space station that was in orbit or to Earth orbit to do some experiment for a few days, they are not ships designed to travel to the moon, for example, although a slightly larger version could perhaps serve, but they are intended exclusively for Earth orbit.
The Starliner left on June 5, 2024 for the international space station and barely got there, it had five helium leaks, which helium is necessary among other things for the cooling of the ship's fuel and also had failures in the propellers, after several weeks of communications from NASA and Boeing like "No problem, we are looking, this can be fixed and not that we did not worry, because nothing is happening here, this can be fixed" in the end they had to Coming to the conclusion to the reality that the Starliner was not in condition to be able to return to Earth with a human crew inside, there was a risk.
In addition, it made strange noises that alarmed the astronauts, so in the end what was decided was that the ship returned without a crew and that the astronauts returned after rescheduling the missions to make two holes in one of the dragon ships that had to go to the international space station, so that "astronauts who are left stranded" in reality, although the headlines you see out there seem very sensationalist is not something new and not even the Starliner astronauts eh they have been there longer than others.
Williams and Wilmore spent 286 days, but NASA astronaut Francisco Carlos Rubio spent 370 days on the international space station after he and two Russian cosmonauts were stranded due to a breakdown that occurred in the Soyuz spacecraft and that had taken them to the space station on December 15, 2022. Here it must be clarified that astronauts stranded or left without a return ship are not in danger, they are not lost in space, nor abandoned as some media or some politicians or some billionaire say.
They are trained to live in space and they are not alone, they are with other astronauts and they are not taking a nap, during their stay they participate in tasks and research work and carry out various experiments and many functions that have to be done on the station, that is, they are working during that time, where is the controversy or the anger because it has reached the level of anger like almost everything lately.
That at the end of January, the CEO of SpaceX Elon Muck declared that President Trump had asked him to bring back Williams and Wilmore as soon as possible because "they had been abandoned by the Biden administration", statements that left everyone amazed, at least those of us who follow astronautics issues because the plans for the return of the astronauts had been underway for months, NASA had agreed with SpaceX for months that they would be the ones to bring the astronauts, there is not much either. options, they could have agreed with Ros Cosmos, that is, with the Russians and paid for the ticket in a Soyuz.
But within a rescheduling of the missions there is the same as had been done previously, although both Musk and Trump stated that the astronauts had been abandoned and that the Biden administration had rejected a proposal from SpaceX to return sooner.
The controversy came to a head when Elon got his nerves crossed and on X he called Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen retarded or idiotic. I don't know what mania the Americans have taken against the Danes. The astronaut responded and said, "You're lying to Elon. It wasn't true that the two astronauts had stayed longer in space for political reasons. The same thing was done that was done previously with the American astronaut and the two Russians who had stayed because the ship had a failed.
The fights that break out, without need...
! The truth will set us free and science is the one that is closest to the truth!
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