Desk
Share
National: Amid the ongoing tug-of-war over the return of Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore from the International Space Station (ISS), NASA has clarified that both astronauts will be brought back to Earth in SpaceX's Crew-9 Dragon capsule. It is worth noting that Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore initially traveled to the International Space Station on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft on a mission for eight days.
However, after reaching there, some technical flaws were found in Boeing's spacecraft, due to which their return to Earth was postponed and currently they have been in the space station for more than 78 days. Now NASA has scheduled their return in February next year using SpaceX's Crew Dragon. This Crew Dragon is going to be launched next month.
Could ISRO have done this mission?
NASA chose Elon Musk's SpaceX for the return of Williams and Barry. Could the Indian space agency ISRO also have completed their return mission? ISRO chief S. Somnath was recently asked about this in a podcast, in response to which he said that at present ISRO does not have the capability to carry out such a mission.
S Somnath said that we cannot do anything right now. We do not have any spacecraft that can go there and rescue them. This is not possible. He said that only America and Russia have spacecraft capable of carrying out such rescue operations.
'Starliner had flaws even during launch'
S Somnath said about Boeing's Starliner spacecraft that some flaws were seen in it. That's why NASA did not want to take the risk, because returning is more dangerous than going and Starliner had faced some problems even before launch, due to which the mission had to be postponed several times.
--Advertisement--
