Sunita Williams, an Indian-origin astronaut who is currently stationed on the International Space Station (ISS) along with another astronaut, Butch Wilmore, has said that they both would participate in the upcoming US presidential elections in November from space, as their stay has been extended at least till Feb 2025.
Williams and Wilmore expressed their desire to vote in a press conference held on Sep 13 broadcast from above 250 miles above Earth from the International Space Station.
On June 5, Williams and her coworker Wilmore from NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) departed on the Boeing Starliner for their first crewed mission, which was scheduled to last eight days in orbit.
However, their stay has been extended to eight months because of the Starliner's multiple technical issues. Starliner returned to Earth on Sep 7 without Williams and Wilmore.
During a press conference that was broadcast on television, Williams said, "That's how things go in this business." Williams said that because both astronauts had spent time on the station before, the adaptation to station life was "not that hard." “This is my happy place. I love being up here in space,” she said.
"We wanted to take Starliner to completion and land back on land at home, but you know, you have to turn the page and look at the next opportunity," she added.
Williams, 58, and Wilmore, 61, are expected to return in Feb 2025 on the Crew-9 voyage of Elon Musk owned SpaceX. Williams admitted that she was a little anxious that she wouldn't be going home right away.
"At the back of my mind, there are folks on the ground who have some plans, like my family...spending time with my mother. And I think I was fretting more about that. Like the things we had planned for this fall or winter...but everybody was on board and that prepared us," she said.
Wilmore said he was "absolutely not" disappointed by the decision to stay in space and that there were "disagreements" on how to manage the return.
"We could have gotten to the point, I believe, where we could have returned on Starliner, but we just simply ran out of time," he said during the press conference.
"In this case, we found some things that we just could not get comfortable with putting us back in the Starliner when we had other options," he added.
The two astronauts expressed excitement about casting their votes for the 2024 US presidential election, a fight between Democrat Kamala Harris and her Republican rival Donald Trump from the International Space Station.
Willmore said he would make his ballot request on Sep 14. "It is a very important role that we all play as American citizens. NASA makes it very easy for us to do that," he said. "Looking forward to voting from space, which is pretty cool," said Williams.
After years of delays, Boeing's Starliner launched on June 5 to carry Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, both former military test pilots, to the ISS.
A day later, as Starliner approached the ISS, NASA and Boeing discovered helium leaks and had problems with the spacecraft's reaction control thrusters. Five of the Starliner's 28 thrusters failed during flight, resulting in significant helium leaks that are used to pressurize the thrusters. It was still able to dock with the space station, which has hosted rotating astronaut crews for more than 20 years.
NASA, however, believed the capsule would not be able to produce the thrust required to return to Earth and chose to move the two passengers to a SpaceX mission and return the Starliner empty.
American astronauts have been voting from space since 1997, when the Texas legislature passed a bill allowing NASA employees to vote from space, the New York Post reported. In 2020, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins also voted from space on the ISS.
