Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley took off on May 30 aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon. (File)
Washington:
The first US astronauts to reach the International Space Station on a US spacecraft in nearly a decade may not return home this weekend as planned due to Hurricane Isaias, NASA said Friday.
Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley took off from Cape Canaveral on May 30 aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon, and are supposed to splash around the coast of Florida on Sunday afternoon.
For the moment, undocking remains scheduled for Saturday at approximately 7:34 p.m. (11:34 p.m. GMT) and disembarkation at 2:42 p.m. (6:42 p.m. GMT) on Sunday.
But NASA said it was closely monitoring Hurricane Isaias – a Category One storm that hit the Bahamas on Friday and was heading for Florida – and would make a final call about six hours before undocking.
“We don’t control the weather, and we know we can stay here longer – there’s more food, and I know the space station program has more work than we can do,” Behnken told the journalists during a press call.
Potential overflow sites are in the Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic coast of Florida.
The mission marked the first time a crewed spacecraft has been launched into orbit from U.S. soil since 2011, when the space shuttle program ended.
It was also the first time that a private company had visited the ISS with astronauts.
The United States paid SpaceX and aerospace giant Boeing a total of around $ 7 billion for their “space taxi” contracts.
But Boeing’s program fell seriously after a failed test late last year that left SpaceX, a company founded only in 2002, as the clear leader.
For the past nine years, American astronauts have traveled exclusively on Russian Soyuz rockets, at a cost of around $ 80 million per seat.
The teammates added that they look forward to returning home after two months, if the return trip goes on Sunday as planned.
“My son is six and I can tell from the videos I get and talking to him on the phone that he has changed a lot,” Behnken said.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
