NASA astronaut Sunita “Suni” Williams has simply been handed the keys to the Worldwide Area Station, marking a milestone in her eight-month-long mission that was initially presupposed to final eight days.
Throughout what’s generally known as a “change of command ceremony” aboard the Worldwide Area Station (ISS), Russian cosmonaut Olog Kononenko handed management of ISS Expedition 71 over to Williams, who arrived to the orbiting laboratory aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft in June.
It is an sudden addition to Williams’ already uncommon go to to house; she and NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore each launched on Starliner’s Crewed Flight Take a look at (CFT), a mission initially anticipated to final a couple of week. Problems with the spacecraft’s thrusters, nonetheless, meant the duo was booked into an prolonged keep aboard the station. It’s because NASA and Boeing in the end determined to return Starliner to Earth with out its crew as a security precaution. Williams and Wilmore must come house in February 2025 aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule.
“It has been a good time to work, and an amazing pleasure to work and spend time collectively right here, as an enormous household onboard the house station,” Kononenko stated in an emotional tackle through the ceremony.
“I’m leaving my second house, the house station, in Sunita’s delicate arms,” he added, as he handed a bodily house station hatch key over to Williams.
Kononenko, together with fellow cosmonaut Nikolai Chub and NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson returned to Earth on Monday (Sep. 23) aboard the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft, touching down in Kazakhstan throughout morning hours. The voyage wrapped up over a yr in house for the 2 cosmonauts, and about six months for Dyson.
For Williams, taking command of the ISS provides to an inventory of unanticipated occurrences all through her time in house.
Starting with Starliner’s thruster points because the spacecraft approached the ISS to dock, she and Wilmore waited on the station for months as Boeing and NASA tried to raised diagnose the craft’s malfunctions via assessments on the bottom. Nevertheless, operators finally determined to return Starliner to Earth with out Williams and Wilmore aboard as a security precaution, absorbing the astronauts into the ISS Expedition 71 crew.
Starliner efficiently accomplished its uncrewed return earlier this month, however Williams and Wilmore’s time in house has now been prolonged to a complete of eight months.
The pair is slated to return to the planet aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon on the finish of the subsequent flight rotation in March of 2025. That mission, Crew-9, is anticipated to launch no sooner than Sep. 26, and is flying with two empty seats to accommodate Williams and Wilmore’s return (this additionally meant chopping two astronauts from Crew-9’s authentic manifest).
Williams, nonetheless, has taken every step with the kind of skilled grace sometimes exemplified by NASA astronauts. In actual fact, this journey is way from Williams’ first spaceflight — and is not even her first time commanding the ISS. Throughout her first launch to the ISS in 2006, Williams flew as flight engineer aboard the Area Shuttle Discovery’s STS-116 mission. Her second go to to the house station got here in 2012, when she took command of ISS Expedition 33.
As of Sep. 23 of this yr, Williams has amassed over 430 days in house.
Receiving the microphone from Kononenko throughout Sunday’s ceremony, Williams thanked her predecessor, joked in regards to the distinctive nature of her mission’s final result in addition to the station crew’s skill to adapt, and voiced some private goodbyes to the departing house explorers. On the finish of her speech, talking in her finest Russian, she wished them a protected and profitable return:
“Expedition 71 has taught all of us loads about flexibility, and the power to adapt to quite a lot of superb issues. A whole lot of issues weren’t deliberate, and one way or the other you guys put all of it collectively and did it. It is fairly superb. Fairly spectacular. You adopted Butch and I, though that was not fairly the plan, however right here we’re as a part of the household. You welcomed Don, Alexi and Yvonne with open arms, and along with your Soyuz crew and Crew-8, you’ve got made this an amazing household. We respect it.
Oleg, we’ll miss your lots of of tales across the dinner desk, however I suppose that is what you get for having over 1,000 days in house. You get these tales, proper? [Nikolai], we’ll miss your precision, your professionalism, however I suppose that is what you get if you join your rookie flight that is over a yr in house. And Tracy, we’re gonna miss your desk and your group, and your skill to make order out of chaos, even within the craziest of instances. So we thanks, all three of you, for that. So I will attempt…(in Russian) I might additionally prefer to want you success. Thanks.”
