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One of the astronauts stranded on the International Space Station since last June explained in a new interview that she is struggling to remember what it feels like to walk and lie down.
Suni Williams made the concerning comments while on a call with students at Needham High School located in Massachusetts on Monday — as she and fellow astronaut Butch Wilmore continued their seemingly never-ending orbit around the Earth.
“I’ve been up here long enough right now I’ve been trying to remember what it’s like to walk,” the Massachusetts native told students at her alma mater.
“I haven’t walked. I haven’t sat down. I haven’t laid down. You don’t have to. You can just close your eyes and float where you are right here,” Williams said of her zero gravity environs, CBS reported.
Williams, 59, and Wilmore’s trip was meant to last only eight days — but the two Americans have now been stranded in space for over eight months due to a series of technical complications.
“It was a little bit of a shock actually,” Williams told students Monday, adding, “We knew that it would be probably a month or so, honestly. But the extended stay was just a little bit different.”
Williams opened up about the strain the accidental space-cation has caused to her relationship with her family.
“My mother’s getting a little bit older, so in that regard, I just try to stay in touch with them and those guys as much as possible,” Williams told the teenagers.
“I think I talk to my mom practically every day. Just check in with her and call her and see how she’s doing. So it’s just a little bit different relationship than we had potentially planned on for the last couple months. But we’re managing.”
On Thursday, Williams and Wilmore, 62, were, in fact, able to stretch their legs in the pair’s first spacewalk since starting their accidental residence in the cold, dark vacuum of space.
The two were tasked with removing a broken antenna and wiping the station’s exterior for evidence of any microbes that might still be alive after launching from Earth, executing the mission on Thursday.
In the process, Williams set a new spacewalking record for female astronauts — becoming the woman with the most time spent spacewalking over a career. She previously performed in eight spacewalks.
Williams and Wilmore are scheduled to be delivered from their orbits around the world in late March or April, when they are scheduled to be relieved by crew members aboard a planned SpaceX Crew-10 flight.
