CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The two astronauts who will spend extra time at the International Space Station are Navy test pilots who have ridden out long missions before.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been holed up at the space station with seven others since the beginning of June, awaiting a verdict on how — and when — they would return to Earth.
NASA decided Saturday they won’t be flying back in their troubled Boeing capsule, but will wait for a ride with SpaceX in late February, pushing their mission to more than eight months. Their original itinerary on the test flight was eight days.
Butch Wilmore
Wilmore, 61, grew up in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, playing football for his high school team and later Tennessee Technological University. He joined the Navy, becoming a test pilot and racking up more than 8,000 hours of flying time and 663 aircraft carrier landings. He flew combat missions during the first Gulf War in 1991 and was serving as a flight test instructor when NASA chose him as an astronaut in 2000.
Wilmore flew to the International Space Station in 2009 as the pilot of shuttle Atlantis, delivering tons of replacement parts. Five years later, he moved into the orbiting lab for six months, launching on a Russian Soyuz from Kazakhstan and conducting four spacewalks.
Married with two daughters, Wilmore serves as an elder at his Houston-area Baptist church. He’s participated in prayer services with the…
