On Saturday (Aug. 24), NASA introduced its long-awaited plan to carry astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams house from the Worldwide Area Station (ISS) no sooner than February 2025 — not less than eight months longer than the preliminary eight-day journey they signed up for.
The return flight — which can ditch the troubled Boeing Starliner spacecraft that the crew rode to the ISS, in favor of a SpaceX car — has no confirmed date. Nevertheless, within the best-case situation of an early-February return, the Starliner crew’s time in area will quantity to no fewer than 240 consecutive days for the reason that spacecraft’s launch on June 5, 2024. A March departure might bump that quantity as much as practically 270 days.
Eight straight months in area feels like loads, but it surely’s removed from a brand new report. Astronauts sometimes spend a median of six months aboard the ISS, the place they conduct experiments and keep the area station earlier than returning to Earth. Nevertheless, missions can lengthen many months longer, for quite a lot of causes, together with long-duration experiments and unexpected incidents.
Who has spent the longest time in area?
The report for probably the most consecutive days in area by an American goes to astronaut Frank Rubio, who spent 371 days aboard the ISS from September 2022 to September 2023.
Rubio was initially anticipated house in March 2023, however his keep in area greater than doubled after a small meteoroid or piece of area junk slammed into the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that was meant to hold him house in December 2022, inflicting irreparable injury. Rubio, together with Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, needed to wait one other six months in area earlier than a alternative Soyuz capsule arrived to carry them house.
Associated: How do tiny items of area junk trigger unimaginable injury?
Whereas Prokopyev and Petelin additionally clocked 371 consecutive days in area, they didn’t break any Russian information. Cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov — who holds the report for probably the most consecutive days spent in area by any human — labored aboard Russia’s now-defunct Mir area station for 437 days, or greater than 14 months, from January 1994 to March 1995. Polyakov volunteered for this mission as a part of a research of the results of long-term spaceflight on human well being.
Different notable long-haul stays in area embrace American astronaut Christina Koch‘s 328 days aboard the ISS from March 2019 to February 2020 — the longest single spaceflight by a girl — and American astronaut Scott Kelly’s 340 days in area from March 2015 to March 2016.
How does area have an effect on the human physique?
Kelly’s prolonged spaceflight — which broke information on the time however has now been surpassed a number of occasions — was a part of NASA’s groundbreaking twins research, which in contrast Kelly’s bodily and psychological well being pre- and post-spaceflight to the baseline well being of his equivalent twin brother Mark Kelly, a retired astronaut and present Arizona senator who remained on Earth throughout his brother’s time in orbit.
The dual research revealed that astronauts expertise a lot of adjustments throughout lengthy stays in orbit, together with adjustments in gene expression, physique weight and intestine microbiome composition. It added to a still-growing physique of analysis that reveals that astronauts who spend prolonged quantities of time in microgravity are additionally more likely to expertise short-term well being impacts similar to muscle and bone loss, imaginative and prescient issues, decrease immunity, an elevated threat of blood clots and irritation, and DNA injury. Most of those adjustments revert to regular after six months again on Earth, researchers have discovered. Nevertheless, the research of spaceflight on human well being continues to be in its infancy.
Whereas Williams and Wilmore spend the following 5 to 6 months in area, they might expertise a few of these momentary adjustments, in addition to adjustments in psychological well being related to isolation and tedium, prior analysis suggests. However their prolonged keep in area is hardly unprecedented — and far safer than sending the pair house on a spacecraft with unresolved technical points.
On its technique to the ISS in June, Starliner sprung a number of helium leaks and confirmed points with a number of of its smaller thrusters. The craft docked safely with the area station, however months of testing have been unable to resolve the problems with certainty. On Aug. 24, NASA officers introduced that, within the curiosity of security, Starliner will undock from the ISS and not using a crew in early September, sending it again to Earth empty whereas Williams and Wilmore wait for his or her journey house in 2025.
