Mint Primer | Sunita Williams’ return: Is space travel so tricky?

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Williams’ and fellow Nasa astronaut Butch Wilmore’s mission aboard a Boeing spacecraft has finally ended and they are safely back on Earth. A leaking propulsion tank and faulty thrusters in the Boeing Starliner threw return plans off schedule.

A subsequent human spaceflight had to be dedicatedly planned for the stranded astronauts, which took time due to natural scheduling challenges. Elon Musk, who runs SpaceX, claimed that he had “offered to bring Williams back" more than six months ago, but Nasa administrator Bill Nelson has denied this. Amid this political slugfest and engineering failure, Williams and Wilmore ended up spending over nine months in space.

Eventually, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon flew Williams and Wilmore back to earth safely—a feat that underlined how far the safety of space missions has evolved in the past two decades. No. Russian spacefarer Valeri Polyakov spent a total of 437 days aboard the now-crashed Mir Space Station, built in the Soviet era of the first space race, between 1994 and 1995.

For the US, astronaut Frank Rubio spent 371 days in space from September 2022—making him the longest-residing American in space. Williams, along with Wilmore, are now the joint sixth-longest space residents for the US—and among 10 of the world’s longest space residents of all time. Veteran Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko has the longest space duration cumulatively—spending 1,111 days of his life in space.

Very long tenures are typically avoided by space agencies, since a long-duration stay impacts the functioning of body and brain, causing muscle loss and change in vision. Yes. This year, the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro)’s Gaganyaan mission is expected to conduct its