Sunita Williams, Butch Wilmore make first public comments since Boeing capsule left without them: 'It was trying…'

Stuck-in-space astronauts Butch Wilmore and Indian-origin Sunita Williams said Friday they appreciated all the prayers and well wishes from strangers back home.

It was their first public comments since last week's return of the Boeing Starliner capsule that took them to the International Space Station in June. They remained behind after NASA determined the problem-plagued capsule posed too much risk for them to ride back in.

Wilmore and Williams are now full-fledged station crew members, chipping in on routine maintenance and experiments. They along with seven others on board welcomed a Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russians and an American earlier this week, temporarily raising the station population to 12, a near record.

“It was trying at times. There were some tough times all the way through,” Wilmore said from 260 miles (420 kilometers) up. As spacecraft pilots, “you don’t want to see it go off without you, but that’s where we wound up.” While they never expected to be up there nearly a year, as Starliner’s first test pilots, they knew there could be problems that might delay their return. “That’s how things go in this business,” Williams said.

The two Starliner test pilots — both retired Navy captains and longtime NASA astronauts — will stay at the orbiting laboratory until late February. They have to wait for a SpaceX capsule to bring them back. That spacecraft is due to launch later this month with a reduced crew of two, with two empty seats for Wilmore and Williams for the return leg.

The transition to station life was “not that hard” since both had previous stints there, said Williams, who logged two long space station stays years ago. “This is my happy place. I love being up here in space,” the Indian-American astronaut said.

Wilmore noted that if his adjustment wasn’t instantaneous, it was “pretty close.” The astronauts said they appreciate all the prayers and well wishes from strangers back home, and that it’s helped them cope with everything they’ll miss out on back home.

Williams couldn’t help but fret for a while over losing precious face-to-face time with her mother. Wilmore won’t be around for his youngest daughter’s final year of high school. He just requested an absentee ballot on Friday so he can vote in the November election from orbit. Both stressed the importance of carrying out their civic duties as their mission goes on.

Their Starliner capsule marked the first Boeing spaceflight with astronauts. It endured a series of thruster failures and helium leaks before arriving at the space station on June 6. It landed safely in the New Mexico desert earlier this month, but Boeing's path forward in NASA's commercial crew program remains uncertain.

The space agency hired SpaceX and Boeing as an orbital taxi service a decade ago after the shuttles retired. SpaceX has been flying astronauts since 2020.

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