NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore finally made it to the safety of the International Space Station Thursday after overcoming malfunctions mid-flight of a commercial Boeing spacecraft. In a decade, Wednesday’s launch from Cape Canaveral was Boeing’s third attempt after two previous launches were aborted, in part due to helium leaks in the service module of its Starliner capsule, named after Williams Calypso. Although deft handling and scientific precision prevailed, the astronauts were plagued by additional helium leaks during the flight, including one known before launch and three discovered after their pod was already in orbit.
The earth held tightly to Calypso. Even strapped to a combined 90,250 pounds of Atlas V propellant, the Starliner capsule struggled to break away—firing its own thrusters in a final burn to stabilize its elliptical orbit. Freed from gravity, Williams and Wilmore were just about to close their eyes when mission control kicked in.
“Looks like we’ve picked up a few more helium escapes,” NASA said from the ground. “Butch, sorry. We’re still piecing the story together.”
“We’re ready,” Wilmore said. “Give it to us.”
The two seasoned astronauts quickly returned to the clock and set to work as they closed the two culprit valves spotted by the hawk-eyed public scientists below. The leaks were sealed, and Boeing came forward to tell NASA that its astronauts were “safe to fly.”
Just as the astronauts were finally within range of the station, a life-saving belay came from NASA engineers guarding the cabin: something was wrong, five of the Starliner’s 28 thrusters were dead. When the jets stopped, it was too dangerous to dock.
Just 850 feet away gleamed the ISS—a meteoroid-beaten patchwork of rocket-heavy space experiments held together by a web of indomitable ground nerds 240 miles below. The station, a massive metal canary in the Russo-American mine, was full of space scientists from both countries, using the last shreds of international consensus to defy the impossible.
Mercury, Gemini, Apollo’s Saturn—since Alan Shepard’s 1961 flight, America’s manned spacecraft have always invoked the Guardians of the Crossroads when they crossed the threshold of the impossible. Then came the space shuttle and the dragon – and according to NASA’s calculations, Williams and Wilmore were aboard the sixth inaugural flight of an American spacecraft after being launched into orbit to the deafening roar of the hard-hitting Russian rocket engines. Seasoned spacewalker Williams, who packed a stash of curry with her Ganesha statue, was now the first woman to take to the stars on such a mission. During the 63 years of convoluted space-time between Shepard’s Mercury launch and her own journey, and during her 322 days in space—a record surpassed by none other than space defender Peggy Whitson—an impossible number of things could have stopped Williams. . With her can parked in the dead space between Calypso and the station, a stone’s throw away, they still could.
But not this time. Not today. When NASA gave them the go-ahead, the pair had already switched the capsule’s thrusters to manual control.
With the manifolds wide open and the helium supply online, Suni and Butch hit it off – unleashing a wave of celestial power through the capsule with a hot fire test that jumpstarted the four dead jets back to life. The intrepid duo dropped the clutch for the Tokyo space drift, shut down the engines and piloted the cabin manually for a second shot at the ISS rendezvous. With surgical precision, Williams and Wilmore’s Calypso maneuvers became a slow-motion ballet towards the forward port of the ISS Harmony dock – where it made a first-ever landing.
NASA and Boeing later confirmed with relief that Calypso was safely docked.
“It’s nice to be attached to a big city in the sky,” Wilmore said.
Suni agreed—jumping out of the capsule and straight into a dance party with the international space crew she calls family.
Wilmore and Williams now join the Expedition 71 crew aboard the ISS – Roscosmos cosmonauts Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin and Oleg Kononenko and NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Matt Dominick, Tracy Dyson and Jeanette Epps. The intrepid duo are expected to stay aboard the space lab for eight days before returning to Earth.