Sunita Williams & Butch Wilmore React To Extended NASA Mission On Whether They Were 'Abandoned’ Or ‘Stuck'

NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore returned to Earth after a nine-month stay on the ISS due to spacecraft issues.

NASA astronauts Sunita Williams, Butch Wilmore and Nick Hague, and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov inside a SpaceX capsule after it splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Florida, USA on March 18.

Source : PTI

NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry 'Butch' Wilmore finally returned to Earth on March 18. Along with them were NASA's Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, who were part of the space agency's Crew-9.

Initially, the mission was scheduled for eight days. However, it took them nine long months to return back to Earth.

The two Starliner astronauts, Williams and Wilmore, made their first appearances for an interview following their space landing.  The two talked about their voyage after spending 286 days aboard the ISS due to an issue with Boeing's spacecraft.

Given that the mission was only supposed to last eight days, the two were asked who was responsible for its failure. In an interview to Fox News, the duo didn't blame Boeing for the hiccup, with Wilmore calling spaceflight 'hard'.

Answering a question on whether NASA and Boeing are at fault, Wilmore said, “Everybody has a piece in this because it did not come off.”

"Is NASA to blame? Are they culpable? Sure. Everybody has a piece in this because it did not come off. There were some shortcomings in tests, shortcomings in preparation that we did not foresee. So yeah, are there, could you point fingers? I don't want to point fingers", Wilmore said.

The two also discussed claims that they were 'abandoned' or 'stuck' in space.

"... In certain respects, we were stuck. In certain respects, maybe we were stranded. But based on how they were couching this, that we were left and forgotten and all that, we were nowhere near any of that at all. So stuck, okay, we didn't get to come home the way we planned. So in one definition, we're stuck. But in the big scheme of things, we weren't stuck. We planned and trained," Wilmore said.

What Sunita Williams Said?

According to Williams, they prepared for the brief trip as though they would be there for a long time.

"Our focus was on the mission, the Starliner portion of the mission, first flights, test flight. And that was our focus, but we trained for everything. Maintenance on station, science on station, spacewalks on station, robotics, arm work on station. We trained for it all. And we were prepared to do anything that we were asked of for a long duration," Williams said.