Being left behind was hard, say stranded astronauts

Two US astronauts stranded in space for eight months have said it was hard to watch their malfunctioning craft depart the International Space Station without them, but they were happy and trained to “expect the unexpected”.

In a press conference on Friday, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore appeared happy and healthy after being told by Nasa to stay onboard the ISS due to potential faults with their Boeing Starliner re-entry vehicle.

“This is my happy place,” said Ms Williams, but she admitted she missed her family and two dogs.

They said they they were not “comfortable” with some issues on the Starliner, but were still sad to see it leave the station and return to Earth without them this week.

The pair thanked people for sending them messages and prayers. “The concern for us specifically is very heart-warming,” Mr Wilmore said.

Asked if they felt let down by Nasa, Mr Wilmore replied “absolutely not”.

The pair left Earth in June for an eight-day mission to test Boeing Starliner’s capsule. Engineers noticed problems with its thrusters and a helium leak, and Nasa decided to keep Ms Williams, 58, and Mr Wilmore, 61, on the ISS until 2025.

They are scheduled to come back on spaceship made by SpaceX, which is Boeing’s rival company.

Both companies were given contracts by Nasa to provide commercial space travel to its astronauts, with the hope that it will drive down costs.

Neither astronaut was likely to say anything critical of Nasa or Boeing.

Mr Wilmore acknowledged that there were issues with Starliner.

“We found some things that we just could not comfortable with when we had other options,” he said.

But he then added he thinks the craft would have eventually been useable as a return vehicle.

“We could have got to the point where we returned on Starliner but we just simply ran out of time,” he said.

The craft returned to Earth last week without the crew, and will now be analysed to identify what went wrong.

Both astronauts said it had been a challenging time for them and it had been hard to watch the Starliner craft leave without them.

“We were watching our spaceship fly away,” said Ms Williams.

Mr Wilmore however said that 90% of training was “preparing for the unexpected”.

He added that they would stay up their for “eight months, nine months, 10 months” if necessary.

They also discussed their routines – Mr Wilmore gets up at 04:30 and Ms Williams at 06:30.

And both said they enjoy the two hours or more of exercise they must do daily to combat the loss of bone density from living in space.

“Your joints don’t hurt, which is quite nice,” added Mr Wilmore.

They have applied for postal ballots so they can vote in the upcoming US election.

Ms Williams said that being in space makes her think more about planet Earth.

“It opens up the door to making you think a bit differently. It’s the one planet we have, and we should be taking care of it,” she said.

“There are so many people on Earth sending us messages it makes you feel right at home with everybody.”