Sunita Williams News: Two NASA astronauts who went into space – Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore – will now be able to return to Earth in February next year. Both of them reached space in the first week of June, where they were supposed to spend a week, but then this mission got prolonged after a malfunction in the Boeing Starliner. Now the Boeing Starliner has returned to Earth without Sunita and Butch, while both astronauts will come next year in SpaceX’s spacecraft. Recently, when the Boeing Starliner landed on Earth, NASA answered the question whether Sunita Williams and other astronauts could be brought back with this? NASA surprisingly answered yes.
After the Starliner landed in Mexico, NASA held a press conference in which questions related to the mission were answered. Steve Stich, manager of the NASA Commercial Crew Program, admitted that if Sunita and Wilmore were on the capsule, they would have definitely landed safely. He said, “Even if there was a crew on our spacecraft, we would have followed the same procedure. This would have included leaving the space station, de-orbit burn and then re-entering the Earth in the same way. This would have led to a successful and safe landing of the crew. Even if Sunita and Wilmore were on the spacecraft, everything would have happened smoothly.”
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft went to the space station in June for a week-long mission, but then it had a helium leak and thruster problems. After this, Sunita and Wilmore’s return was put on hold. After months of continuous intense discussions, it was decided that Starliner would be brought back without any crew. However, NASA’s Stich said that it was the right decision not to call Wilmore and Sunita back from Starliner. He said, “It was difficult for the team and difficult for me too and especially when we saw the successful landing of Starliner, but it was just a test flight. We were not fully confident about the performance of the thruster and that is why we decided that the spacecraft would return without any crew. “