Takeaways from Sunita’s space saga
THE extended stay of astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore in space has finally ended. The two have returned to the earth after staying on the International Space Station (ISS) for 286 days. Astronauts from various countries now frequently go into space and stay at the space outpost for periods ranging from a few days to months. The trip of Sunita and Wilmore, however, attracted global attention because it was scheduled to last eight days but they ended up being there for almost nine months. This was because the space module made by Boeing that transported them to space developed a snag and was considered unfit to transport human crew back to the earth. NASA did not want to take chances with the safety of its crew and waited this long till a suitable module became available.
Astronauts generally train on specific modules slated to transport them to space. To bring them back in a module with which they were unfamiliar would have been risky. The two have returned in the four-seater module that was docked with the ISS in September last year. It is commanded by the same astronaut duo (an American and a Russian) which travelled in it at that time.
The popular use of words like ‘stranded’ and ‘stuck’ to describe the longer-than-planned stay of Sunita and Wilmore on the ISS appears misplaced. It was not the first time astronauts stayed on the ISS for this long. Nor was it a new experience for Sunita. The ISS has been around for almost 25 years and has been continuously occupied by astronauts from the US, Russia, Europe, Japan, etc. for different lengths of time. The orbiting laboratory, assembled block by block since 1998, is the size of a football field with living modules and places for astronauts to work as well as docking ports where modules ferrying astronauts or supplies dock.
At any given time, the space station has four to eight astronauts from different countries engaged in biological, biomedical and plant-related experiments. This week, the station had 11 astronauts for a short time. Besides participating in experiments, they carry out tasks like deploying satellites and maintenance of the orbiting platform. This involves repairing external parts like robotic arms through spacewalks. As the space station is occupied all the time, it is continuously supplied with food and other essentials through cargo missions. This means that Sunita and Wilmore were neither in isolation nor stranded like astronauts in some sci-fi movies.
Living in space for 286 days may sound like a long time, but it is not something new. The record of the longest continuous stay on the ISS is held by Frank Rubio, who completed a single mission aboard the station of 371 days in September 2023. He surpassed the earlier record of 355 days set by Mark Vande Hei in 2022. The long stays on the ISS still fall short of what some Soviet cosmonauts did on the Soviet station, Mir, which preceded the ISS. Mir set several records in long-duration spaceflight. Physician-cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov lived aboard Mir for a single continuous-orbit stay of 437 days during 1994-95. Three astronauts currently on the Chinese space station, Tiangong, have spent 139 days continuously, with one of them, Cai Xuzhe, having logged a cumulative 320 days in space.
One of the primary goals of operating space stations is to explore the possibilities of long-term stay in space, particularly the impact of living in microgravity conditions on the human body. Bone and muscle loss during long stays in space is of great concern. Since the 1970s, when such experiments began with Salyut and Skylab, scientists have gathered a lot of data. Many experiments are designed to collect biomedical data. For instance, Wilmore, during the current expedition, helped install a device that combines cycling, rowing and resistance exercises to help astronauts remain healthy on long-duration missions. It can help counter bone and muscle loss and improve cardiovascular health. Another experiment involved collecting cardiovascular data like heart rate, breathing rate, blood pressure and temperature using a set of garments fitted with sensors. All this is aimed at countering the health impacts of long-duration space expeditions. If humans are to inhabit the moon or travel to Mars, astronauts’ health has to be the top priority.
After the experience of Soviet and American space stations in the 1970s and 1980s, it was felt that maintaining a space lab is a costly affair. The ISS, therefore, was developed as an international endeavour. Five space agencies — NASA, Canadian Space Agency, European Space Agency, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Roscosmos — operate the station, with each responsible for managing and controlling the hardware it provides. The participation of astronauts is not restricted to these five agencies. The ISS has hosted over 260 of them from 21 countries in some 60 expeditions since 2000. India is going to join this list with astronaut-candidate Shubhanshu Shukla slated to fly to the ISS soon. While the ISS is projected to last till 2030, China has developed its space station and an Indian station is estimated to be ready by 2035. The space station exercise began as a Cold War-era project, then became an international project, and appears to be once again an exercise about supremacy in space, with nations building separate space stations.
In America, there is a decisive shift towards private companies leading the space race, beginning with space transportation systems. SpaceX, Boeing and other private firms are working closely with NASA in servicing the ISS as well as working on ambitious lunar and Mars exploration projects. With SpaceX promoter Elon Musk becoming a key decision-maker in the Trump administration and billionaire astronaut Jared Isaacman nominated to lead NASA, private companies are likely to have a greater share of the space pie in the future. They are going to benefit from the experience of veteran astronauts like Sunita and Wilmore in designing missions and running operations. Hopefully, the spirit of innovation and adventure at the core of space exploration will survive.
