NASA astronauts’ return is near. Their long, unlikely trip puts focus on resilience.
In a YouTube video posted by NASA, kids sit cross-legged in neat rows in a gymnasium at Sunita L. Williams Elementary School in Needham, Massachusetts. You can see them wave their little hands at the camera, which beams the image roughly 250 miles above Earth to the International Space Station.
They were talking in December with none other than Sunita Williams, the school’s namesake and an astronaut living on the space station.
She should have been home already. A series of technical failures extended an eight-day mission to nine months, leading some news organizations and politicians to play up tension and place blame.
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A narrative grew that two astronauts were “stranded” in space. But their training and character may tell a story of adaptability and strength.
But Ms. Williams’ livestream with those young students gave a glimpse into another side of the saga.
Suspended in microgravity, Ms. Williams bats around a stuffed wildcat, the school’s mascot. She is asked how astronauts celebrate their birthdays on the space station.
“Of course, we have to still sometimes work, but the crew on board tries to make it pretty special, and we’ve become pretty good at making cakes up here,” she says. They use pudding for the frosting and cinnamon buns for the cake.
Her birthday, which came in September, coincided with International Talk Like a Pirate Day, she adds.
An astronaut floating by lets out a convincing “arggghhh.”
The astronauts acknowledge it has been difficult to be unexpectedly away from family for so long. But their experience doesn’t match headlines saying Ms. Williams and Butch Wilmore were “stranded,” or President Donald Trump declaring on social media that the astronauts had been “abandoned in space.”
Now, a mission is preparing to bring them back, possibly later this week.
Their journey, to some who have followed it closely, reveals less about a NASA mission gone wrong and more about the character of resilience.
Isolation and confinement
Confinement and isolation are among the top psychological challenges astronauts can face, says Lawrence Palinkas, a public health professor at the University of California, San Diego. And changes in plan, like the extended stay for Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore, can make those challenges harder to bear, he says.
When a few people are stuck with one another, trivial behaviors – like how someone chews their food, or does chores – can become a source of irritation. Astronauts also lack privacy. They are constantly surrounded by fellow crew members, monitored by Mission Control, and speaking with reporters, classrooms, and researchers.
At the same time, although they can speak with family during the day, they are physically isolated from the ones they love most.
“If something unplanned or unexpected occurs, a medical emergency, for example, or the death of a loved one, being unable to be there physically can be a source of stress,” Dr. Palinkas says.
NASA’s Behavioral Health & Performance unit works to lower stress. In 2004, NASA employees orchestrated a video call for an astronaut to see his newborn child. And, in 2003, they helped a wedding proceed as planned while the soon-to-be-husband was in space. Wedding pictures show his wife holding a life-size cardboard cutout of the astronaut.
The unit also helps choose resilient astronauts, says Ido Mizrahy, director of the 2023 documentary “Space: The Longest Goodbye.”
Mr. Mizrahy says Al Holland, who was a NASA psychologist for decades, looked for people with “this innate desire to explore, and that helps kind of soothe the itches and the pains and the other stuff that can be really, really hard to stomach for other people.”
Astronauts on the ISS must be able to weather setbacks, too, he says. “Suddenly, it’s like you’re failing most of the time. Everything’s hard. Going to the bathroom is hard. Being away from your daughter is hard.”
“There was a certain grief in being home”
The hardest aspect of spaceflight for some astronauts may actually be returning to Earth, not staying on the mission longer than expected.
Former astronaut Cady Coleman, the author of “Sharing Space: An Astronaut’s Guide to Mission, Wonder, and Making Change,” does not worry that Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore are “stranded” or in need of “rescue.” She knows them.
In fact, she says, “They weren’t going to have that opportunity” for an extended stay in space, “and then it was so great that they did.”
For the past few years, she says, their mission has been to ferry a shuttle to and from the space station, spending only eight or so days at a time, without the chance to live there and do experiments. And space, Ms. Coleman adds, is Ms. Williams’ “happy place.”
Ms. Coleman has been to space multiple times and was featured in “Space: The Longest Goodbye.” Being up there, she says, “I felt like every single thing that I did was meaningful.” When the time came for her to return, part of her wanted to stay longer.
She acknowledges how nice it was to be reunited with her family. But “there was a certain grief in being home,” she says.
“The astronaut,” Mr. Mizrahy says, “is leaving behind an experience that’s hard to put into words and now has to go back to normal stuff, like making dinner and watching TV.”
Still, after adjusting to life on Earth, astronauts can be left with a lasting psychological resilience, says Dr. Palinkas. While in space, they had to rely on others, remain flexible, and weather extreme isolation and confinement.
He says many come back with the belief that “if I can handle this, I can handle anything.”
“Suni is a living example of dreams actualized”
At the elementary school in Needham, the narrative is just the opposite of what has dominated the news cycle.
“This is unexpected, but she’s trained for this, and she has provisions on the space station, and she’s doing something she enjoys,” Principal Kiana Brunson says she and other adults tell the kids.
In 2017, the school was named after Ms. Williams, who graduated from the public school district in 1983. Ms. Williams is planning a visit in the near future. Ms. Brunson calls Ms. Williams a “natural teacher.” When she has come by in the past, she pops into different classrooms, warmly engaging students of all ages.
“Suni is a living example of dreams actualized,” says Ms. Brunson. “When you’re a kid, you have these grandiose dreams of the jobs and the things you might do in this life.”
Ms. Brunson says Ms. Williams shows the kids that they, too, can do something “spectacular.”
