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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The 2 astronauts who will spend further time on the Worldwide House Station are Navy check pilots who’ve ridden out lengthy missions earlier than.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been holed up on the area station with seven others because the starting of June, awaiting a verdict on how — and when — they’d return to Earth.
NASA determined Saturday they will not be flying again of their troubled Boeing capsule, however will await a trip with SpaceX in late February, pushing their mission to greater than eight months. Their unique itinerary on the check flight was eight days.
Butch Wilmore
Wilmore, 61, grew up in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, taking part in soccer for his highschool staff and later Tennessee Technological College. He joined the Navy, changing into a check pilot and racking up greater than 8,000 hours of flying time and 663 plane service landings. He flew fight missions in the course of the first Gulf Warfare in 1991 and was serving as a flight check teacher when NASA selected him as an astronaut in 2000.
Wilmore flew to the Worldwide House Station in 2009 because the pilot of shuttle Atlantis, delivering tons of alternative components. 5 years later, he moved into the orbiting lab for six months, launching on a Russian Soyuz from Kazakhstan and conducting 4 spacewalks.
Married with two daughters, Wilmore serves as an elder at his Houston-area Baptist church. He’s participated in prayer providers with the congregation whereas in orbit.
His household is used to the uncertainty and stress of his career. He met spouse Deanna amid Navy deployments, and their daughters had been born in Houston, astronauts’ house base.
“That is all they know,” Wilmore mentioned earlier than the flight.
Suni Williams
Williams, 58, is the primary lady to function a check pilot for a brand new spacecraft. She grew up in Needham, Massachusetts, the youngest of three born to an Indian-born mind researcher and a Slovene American well being care employee. She assumed she’d go into science like them and regarded changing into a veterinarian. However she ended up on the Naval Academy, itching to fly, and served in a Navy helicopter squadron abroad in the course of the navy buildup for the Gulf Warfare.
NASA selected her as an astronaut in 1998. Due to her personal various background, she jumped on the probability to go to Russia to assist behind the scenes with the nonetheless new Worldwide House Station. In 2006, she flew up aboard shuttle Discovery for her personal prolonged mission. She needed to keep longer than deliberate — 6 1/2 months — after her trip house, Atlantis, suffered hail injury on the Florida pad. She returned to the area station in 2012, this time serving as its commander.
She carried out seven spacewalks throughout her two missions and even ran the Boston Marathon on a station treadmill and competed in a triathlon, substituting an train machine for the swimming occasion.
Husband Michael Williams, a retired U.S. marshal and former Naval aviator, is tending to their canine again house in Houston. Her widowed mom is the one who frets.
“I’m her child daughter so I believe she’s at all times frightened,” Williams mentioned earlier than launching.
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The Related Press Well being and Science Division receives assist from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Academic Media Group. The AP is solely chargeable for all content material.
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