Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams’s job was simple when they took off to the International Space Station (ISS) on June 5. They were to test-fly the Boeing Starliner crew capsule for the first time with a human crew, assess its performance (including its manual controls), dock with the ISS, and return to the earth in about a week.

But what was supposed to be a straightforward eight-day mission has since turned into an eight-month opera, with NASA now indicating the two astronauts will return only in 2025. Starliner’s helium leak and malfunctioning thrusters have caused this delay. While Boeing remains optimistic, it doesn’t look like the duo will return to the earth onboard Starliner..

ISS’s current occupants

Nine crew members are currently aboard the ISS as part of Expedition 71: Williams, Wilmore, Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, Tracy Caldwell-Dyson, Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps, and Alexander Grebenkin.

Kononenko and Chub arrived at the ISS onboard the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft as part of Expedition 70 and stayed on for Expedition 71. Caldwell-Dyson joined the ISS crew on March 25 this year, aboard Soyuz MS-25. All three are scheduled to return on September 24 onboard Soyuz MS-25.

Dominick, Barratt, Epps, and Grebenkin arrived at the ISS as part of the SpaceX Crew-8 onboard the Dragon Endeavour on March 5, to join Expedition 71. They are also set to return to Earth in September 2024 using the same craft.

As Expedition 71 prepares for its return journey, its crew will hand over the space station to the members of Expedition 72, which will begin on September 24 with a seven-member crew.

Williams and Wilmore should have left the ISS before Expedition 72 began. Thanks to Starliner’s malfunctioning thrusters, they are currently extending their stay at the ISS.

Supplies to the station

Plenty of food and other supplies are available on the ISS. They were recently restocked, too. On August 14, the Progress MS-28 (a.k.a. Progress 89P) cargo resupply ship launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying about three tonnes of food, clothing, fuel, medical and hygiene supplies, and scientific equipment to the space station. This included 950 kg of propellant, 420 kg of water, and 50 kg of nitrogen to replenish the station’s atmosphere.

Almost 50% of the oxygen from exhaled carbon dioxide is recycled. More oxygen is produced by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity generated by solar panels. The main challenge is the smell: body odour can linger in the confined space of the station, making the air unbreathable. To address this, nitrogen from the earth is mixed with the oxygen produced in the station to create fresh air.

A week earlier, on August 4, the Cygnus NG-21 American cargo spacecraft had delivered 3.8 tonnes of cargo and supplies to the ISS, including 1,021 kg of crew supplies (such as food and clothing), 1,220 kg of research equipment, 43 kg of spacewalk equipment, 1,560 kg of hardware for ISS repair and maintenance, and 13 kg of computer resources.

With these replenishments, there is no shortage of essential items such as food, water, oxygen, and other supplies to meet the additional demands.

What the astronauts wear

The space station doesn’t have laundry. In its 22º to 25º C conditions, the astronauts don’t sweat much either and there is hardly any dust. As a result, clothes don’t become dirty even if worn for weeks.

The crew changes exercise gear weekly. Inner clothing is worn once every few days, and shirts, tops, pants, and trousers are worn for weeks. Discarded clothing is stored in a cargo ship along with other refuse generated on the station. When a new resupply ship arrives, the old cargo ship is detached and re-enters the earth’s atmosphere, where it safely burns up.

With two resupply ships docking with the ISS in just weeks, NASA will surely have sent the necessary replacement articles of clothing for Willians and Wilmore.

Jostling for space

The ISS is as big as a six-bedroom villa yet is equipped with only seven permanent sleeping pods. When extra members arrive, there are not enough beds for everyone.

This is not a new problem: there are often more astronauts than bedrooms. In 2009, a record number of 13 members lived on the station. Any surface on the space station — whether a floor, wall or ceiling — is suitable to roll out a sleeping bag. It just has to be fastened to the surface to prevent it from drifting around.

The space station also has three commodes to meet the needs of an 11-member crew. There are no showers and members do not bathe. Water does not rain down in space from the shower; it hovers as droplets. Instead, the crew uses special wipes to sponge the body and keep it clean.

When the crew is at full capacity, exercise schedules become harder to plan. Each astronaut must adhere to a specific exercise regimen to counter muscle and bone loss in orbit. Mission controllers carefully allocate exercise time for each resident.

Welcome to overstay

This isn’t the first time crew members have lingered in the ISS beyond the plan. Minor glitches like in the weather can delay the return of spacecraft, extending the stay for days — as can technical issues.

In 1979, Cosmonauts Vladimir Lyakhov and Valery Ryumin had to extend their stay from 108 to 175 days in the Soviet space station Salyut when the ship carrying a replacement crew hit a snag. The replacement crew landed safely back down. Fearing the Soyuz spacecraft that took them to the Salyut station might also be faulty, ground controllers called it back empty. Another uncrewed capsule was launched later to retrieve them.

The case of Sergei Krikalev and Alexander Volkov was curious. Krikalev, riding on the Soyuz TM-12, launched on May 19, 1991, and reached Mir station. Volkov joined him in October 1991, ferried by Soyuz TM-13. They both opted to stay back and supervise the Mir space station when its remaining crew returned to the earth. But in the meantime, the Soviet Union was plunged into political chaos and was dissolved on December 26. The duo thus went to space as Soviet citizens and returned on March 25, 1992, as Russian citizens. Krikalev ended up being in space for 311 consecutive days, twice the duration of his original mission.

Following the Columbia tragedy in 2003 that killed seven astronauts, cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin and U.S. astronauts Ken Bowerso and Don Pettit were marooned in ISS. They had to wait two months before an uncrewed replacement Soyuz spacecraft brought them home in May 2003.

A small space rock hit the Soyuz spacecraft that took U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin to the ISS in 2022. The coolant tank developed a puncture and gas leaked out, rendering the craft inoperable. They had to spend 371 days in space instead of the planned 188. A replacement Soyuz craft was sent swiftly, but they remained onboard the ISS until 2023 for operational reasons.

The back-up plan

In the event the Starliner is deemed unfit for the return journey, NASA has a backup plan: the Crew 9 Dragon team, consisting of four members, will replace the current crew. The SpaceX Crew 9 mission is scheduled for launch in September 2024 and return in February 2025.

If Starliner is not fit by then, NASA also plans to ground two crews and launch only a two-member team. Williams and Wilmore will be inducted as the official crew of Expedition 72. During the return journey, they will join Crew 9 Dragon and occupy the two vacant seats.

T.V. Venkateswaran is a science communicator and visiting faculty member at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali.

Two astronauts marooned in space may sound like the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster, but for two NASA crew members, it is now a reality. Commander Barry Wilmore and pilot Sunita Williams are currently in limbo on the International Space Station (ISS).

They arrived in the Boeing Starliner spacecraft – the first test of the spaceship with astronauts. Wilmore and Williams were supposed to stay on the ISS for around eight days and return on the same spacecraft. But there is now debate about the safety of Starliner after it experienced helium leaks and thruster problems on its way to the ISS.

In coming days, NASA and Boeing may decide to clear Starliner to carry the astronauts back to Earth. This means their stay might not last too much longer. But if officials decide against Starliner, the astronauts face waiting an additional six months in orbit before returning. So how do astronauts cope with a potential six-month wait for a lift home?

Waiting for things is difficult at the best of times. Under normal circumstances, it is frustrating, stressful and anxiety-provoking. But in extreme situations, with high stakes, waiting can be purgatory.

Part of the reason that waiting is difficult is that it distorts our sense of time. Think of last time you were waiting for a delayed train, test results or a text from a potential new partner. Did it fly by or drag? For most people, time spent waiting crawls at a glacial pace. As a result, delays and periods of anticipation often feel much longer than they actually are.

Waiting slows our perception of time, because it changes the amount of time that we spend thinking about time. During normal daily life we often ignore time; our brains have a limited capacity. If time isn’t important, we simply don’t think about it, and this helps it to pass quickly.

When we are waiting, our desire to know when the wait is over increases how much we think about time. This “clock watching” can make the minutes and hours feel like they are passing at a snail’s pace. Stress, discomfort and pain exacerbate this effect, meaning that waiting in difficult situations can seem even longer.

Waiting also slows our perception of time because it what we do and how we feel. Normal life is busy and full of ever-changing activities and interactions. The sudden need to wait halts the flow of life, often leaving us with nothing else to do, thus increasing levels of boredom and frustration.

In general, time filled with activity passes more quickly. We all got a taste of this during COVID lockdowns. When we were stuck inside unable to see friends and engage in normal daily activities, the loss of routine and distractions caused time to drag for many.

For the astronauts stuck on the ISS, anxiety about when they will return, limited opportunities for activities and fewer opportunities to contact friends and families combine to make their wait to return home feel significantly longer than six months – if it should come to that.

However, as academics who research the effects of time on human psychology and biology, our ongoing work with crew members at research stations in Antarctica aims to shed light on whether waiting in extreme environments is different to waiting during normal daily life.

A year in Antarctica

While being stuck for six months on the ISS may sound like many people’s worst nightmare, it is not uncommon for scientists to spend long periods isolated and confined in extreme environments. Every year, organisations such as the Instituto Antártico Argentino (which uses the Belgrano II Antarctic station), the French Polar Institute and the Italian Antarctic Programme, in cooperation with the European Space Agency (which all use Antarctica’s Concordia station), send crews of people for up to 16 months to conduct research on the frozen continent.

During the March to October polar winter, teams spend six months in near darkness – and from May to August, in complete darkness – facing outside temperatures of up to -60C, wind speeds of 160 km/h (100 mph) and storms which prevent almost all outdoor activity. Limited internet coverage can also prevent constant communication with the outside world.

For the last year, we have researched how life in Antarctica influences people’s experience of time. Each month, we asked crew members how time felt like it was passing in comparison to before their mission. Trapped on base, with limited contact with the outside world, you might expect time to drag. However, our results suggest the opposite may be true.

Analysis of crew members’ experiences indicated that being constantly busy with complex tasks such as scientific research helped time to pass swiftly, according to 80% of crew responses. Only 3% of responses indicated that time actually dragged, and these reports occurred when nights were long and there was little to do.

These experiences may provide hope for those stuck on the ISS. Like life on an Antarctic station, these Nasa astronauts have a busy and mentally demanding existence. These factors may help time to pass quickly.

However, a key factor of their wait may be their ability to tolerate the uncertainty of when they will return. Wilmore and Williams will spend their time in a space equivalent to the inside a Boeing 747 plane. But better information about “when” things will happen and “why” delays are being incurred can help people to tolerate waiting and reduce its impact on their wellbeing.

(Authors:Ruth Ogden, Professor of the Psychology of Time, Liverpool John Moores University and Daniel Eduardo Vigo, Senior Researcher in Chronobiology, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Argentina)

(Disclosure Statement: Ruth Ogden receives funding from The British Academy, The Wellcome Trust, the Economic and Social Research Council, CHANSE and Horizon 2020. This piece was written as part of the Wellcome Trust Project “After the End” 225238/Z/22/Z. The work reported in this article is in collaboration with ESA and IIA as part of the SPACE-TIME project. Daniel Vigo is a research career awardee from the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and a senior professor at the Catholic University of Argentina (UCA). The work reported in this article is conducted as part of a collaboration between UCA, CONICET, the Argentine Antarctic Institute (IAA), the Joint Antarctic Command, and the Health Coordination of the Defense Ministry, under the frame of an agreement signed between the European Space Agency (ESA), the IAA, and the National Commission on Space Activities (CONAE)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

File picture of NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, ahead of Boeing’s Starliner-1 Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who should have been back on Earth weeks ago said Wednesday that they’re confident that Boeing’s space capsule can return them safely, despite a string of vexing breakdowns.

NASA test pilots Wilmore and Indian-origin Williams launched aboard Boeing’s new Starliner capsule early last month, the first people to ride it.

Helium leaks and thruster failures almost derailed their arrival at the International Space Station, and has kept them there much longer than planned. Now the earliest they could return may be the end of July, officials said.

In their first news conference from orbit, the pair said they expect to return once thruster testing is complete here on Earth. They said they’re not complaining about getting extra time in orbit, and are enjoying helping the station crew. Both have previously spent stints at the orbiting lab, which is also home to seven others.

“I have a real good feeling in my heart that the spacecraft will bring us home, no problem,” Ms. Williams told reporters.

The test flight should have lasted eight days, ending on June 14.

NASA’s commercial crew program director Steve Stich said the earliest the Starliner astronauts might return is the end of July. The goal is to get them back before SpaceX delivers a fresh crew in mid-August, but that, too, could change, he noted.

This week, NASA and Boeing are trying to duplicate the Starliner’s thruster problems on a brand new unit at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, one of the prime landing sites in the US western desert. The trouble is in the propulsion system, used to maneuver the spacecraft.

Five thrusters failed as the capsule approached the space station on June 6, a day after liftoff. Four have since been reactivated. Wilmore said there should be enough working thrusters to get him and Williams out of orbit. There are also bigger engines that could fill in, if necessary.

“That mantra you’ve heard, failure is not an option, that’s why we are staying here now,” Mr. Wilmore said. “We trust that the tests that we’re doing are the ones we need to do to get the right answers, to give us the data that we need to come back.”

Boeing and NASA consider the ground tests essential to determine what might have gone wrong since that part of the capsule — the service module — is discarded before landing. The leaks also are located in this disposable section.

So far, testing has not replicated the hot temperatures reached during the flight, according to Mr. Stich. Managers want to make sure the suspect thrusters are not damaged, before bringing Starliner back. They were fired more frequently than anticipated early in the flight, and the extra demand on them may have caused them to fail, Mr. Stich noted.

At the same time, ground tests are being conducted to better understand the helium leaks, which could stem from bad seals. Officials have previously said there is ample helium left for the trip home.

Hurricane Beryl slowed some of the work. Johnson Space Centre in Houston, home to the control centres for both NASA and Boeing, was closed earlier this week to all but the most critical staff.

Boeing’s Mark Nappi stressed that in an emergency, Starliner and its crew could return right now. While the company does not believe the thrusters are damaged, “we want to fill in the blanks and run this test to assure ourselves of that.”

NASA ordered up the Starliner and SpaceX Dragon capsules a decade ago for astronaut flights to and from the space station, paying each company billions of dollars. SpaceX’s first taxi flight with astronauts was in 2020. Boeing’s first crew flight was repeatedly delayed because of software and other issues.

There have been no discussions with SpaceX about sending up a rescue capsule, Mr. Stich said.