On Saturday (24 August), NASA announced its long-awaited Plan to bring astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams home from the International Space Station (ISS) no earlier than February 2025 – at least eight months longer than the original eight-day trip for which they had signed up.
The return flight — which Problematic Boeing Starliner space probe that the crew flew to the ISS and took a SpaceX vehicle instead – has no confirmed date. However, in the best-case scenario of an early February return, the Starliner crew’s time in space will be no less than 240 consecutive days, since the spacecraft’s launch on June 5, 2024. A March departure could increase that number to nearly 270 days.
While eight months in space sounds like a lot, it’s far from a new record. According to Live Science’s sister site, astronauts typically spend an average of six months aboard the ISS, conducting experiments and maintaining the space station before returning to Earth. Space.comHowever, missions can be extended by many months for various reasons, such as lengthy experiments or unforeseen incidents.
Who has spent the longest time in space?
The record for most consecutive days in space by an American goes to Astronaut Frank Rubio, who spent 371 days on board the ISS from September 2022 to September 2023.
Rubio was originally expected to return home in March 2023, but his stay in space has more than doubled after a small meteorite or piece of space junk crashed into the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that was supposed to bring him home in December 2022 caused irreparable damage. Rubio, along with Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, had to wait another six months in space until a replacement Soyuz capsule arrived to bring them home.
Related: How can tiny pieces of space debris cause incredible damage?
Although Prokopyev and Petelin spent 371 consecutive days in space, they did not set a Russian record. Cosmonaut Valery Polyakov – who holds the record for most consecutive days in space – worked aboard the now-defunct Russian space station Mir for 437 days, or more than 14 months, from January 1994 to March 1995. Polyakov volunteered for the mission as part of a study on the effects of long-term space flights on human health.
Other notable long-distance stays in space are The American astronaut Christina Koch328 days on board the ISS from March 2019 to February 2020 – the longest single space flight by a woman – and American astronaut Scott Kelly’s 340 days in space from March 2015 to March 2016.
What effect does space have on the human body?
Kelly’s extended space flight – which broke records at the time but has since been surpassed many times – was part of NASA’s groundbreaking twin studycomparing Kelly’s physical and mental health before and after the spaceflight with the general health of his identical twin brother, Mark Kelly. Mark Kelly is a retired astronaut and current Senator from Arizona who remained on Earth during his brother’s time in orbit.
The twin study found that astronauts a series of changes during long stays in orbit, including changes in gene expression, body weight and gut microbiome composition. It added still growing research stock This shows that astronauts who spend long periods of time in microgravity are also likely to experience short-term health effects such as muscle and bone loss, vision problems, lower immunity, increased risk of blood clots and inflammation, and DNA damage. Most of these changes return to normal after six months on Earth, researchers found. However, research into the effects of space travel on human health is still in its infancy.
As Williams and Wilmore spend the next five to six months in space, they may experience some of these temporary changes, as well as Changes in mental health associated with isolation and boredomprevious research suggests. But their extended stay in space is hardly unprecedented – and much safer than sending the couple home in a spaceship with unresolved technical problems.
On the way to the ISS in June, the Starliner had several hydrogen leaks and showed problems with several of its smaller engines. The spacecraft docked safely with the space station, but months of testing failed to resolve the problems with certainty. On August 24, NASA officials announced that, for safety reasons, Starliner will undock from the ISS without a crew in early September and return to Earth empty while Williams and Wilmore await their flight home in 2025.
