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NASA’s record-holding astronaut is urging his two stuck-in-space colleagues to remain constructive and “sustain the great work.”
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Frank Rubio is aware of firsthand about unexpectedly lengthy spaceflights. His personal go to to the Worldwide Area Station lasted simply over a 12 months, twice so long as deliberate.
So for the previous two weeks, he’s been serving to out together with his pals’ prolonged keep. He mentioned he spoke with Suni Williams on Thursday and expressed pleasure in how she and Butch Wilmore have coped with their state of affairs.
Williams and Wilmore ought to have returned to Earth on Boeing’s troubled Starliner capsule again in June, every week after blasting off on its first check flight with a crew. After intensive assessments and evaluation of thruster issues and helium leaks, NASA determined final weekend it will be safer for SpaceX to fly them residence, however that received’t occur till February, greater than eight months after they blasted off.
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“They’re doing nice work, actually sustaining a constructive angle up there, setting a fantastic instance and knocking out a complete lot of additional work on the house station,” Rubio instructed The Related Press from NASA’s Johnson Area Heart in Houston.
Whereas remaining in house till subsequent 12 months isn’t “the optimum final result,” Rubio mentioned, “they’ve finished a improbable job of coping with adversity.” Their households, like his personal, even have needed to make sacrifices due to the swap in plans.
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“However that’s a part of our job is simply to adapt and overcome and make the perfect of the state of affairs,” he mentioned, “and so they’ve finished simply that, so tremendous happy with them.”
Williams and Wilmore haven’t spoken publicly in regards to the Starliner dilemma since their lone orbital information convention final month, nicely earlier than the choice to bump them to SpaceX and produce Boeing’s capsule again empty in early September.
Rubio’s personal mission was prolonged after his Russian Soyuz capsule was hit by house junk and leaked all its coolant. A brand new Soyuz needed to be rushed up for him and his two Russian crewmates, and so they rode it again to Earth final September. Rubio holds the U.S. document for the longest single spaceflight together with his 371-day mission.
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