US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he expects to have rescued astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore at the White House after they “get better” as it is going to be “tough” for them.
“Number one, they have to get better,” he told Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham ahead of the two NASA astronauts’ return to earth after being in the International Space Station for nine months.
Sunita Williams, 59, and Butch Wilmore, 62, arrived on earth after 286 days aboard a SpaceX capsule that brought the stuck astronauts back. Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico early Tuesday evening. Splashdown occurred off the coast of Tallahassee in the Florida Panhandle.
“You know, when you’re up there and you have no pull in your muscle, you have no gravity, you can lift 1,000 pounds like this,” Trump said.
Donald Trump took a note of the challenges the astronauts will have to face to adjust their bodies to the earth and said they will visit him at the Oval Office after feeling better.
“They have to get, they have to get better. It’s going to be a little bit tough for them. It’s not easy. They were up there a long time, and when they do, they’ll come to the Oval Office,” he said.
What will happen to Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore?
The absence of gravity has its effects on long-duration space travellers, who experience dizziness, nausea and an unstable gait when they return to earth.
Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore are likely to experience the same.
For the test pilots of Boeing’s new Starliner capsule, an eight-day mission stretched to more than nine months as a series of helium leaks and thruster failures deemed their spacecraft unsafe and had to return empty in September.
“Once the astronaut returns to Earth, they are immediately forced to readjust again, back to Earth’s gravity, and can experience issues standing, stabilising their gaze, walking, and turning. For their safety, returning astronauts are often placed in a chair immediately upon return to Earth,” Houston-based Baylor College of Medicine said in a note on body changes in space.
It may take Williams and Wilmore several weeks to adjust to the changes.
