vvjl How They Celebrated the Holidays 250 Miles Above Earth
In Junevvjl, two NASA astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, set out for what was expected to be an eight-day trip to the International Space Station.
On Wednesday — around six months and several spacecraft malfunctions later — they donned Santa Claus hats and wished their families the best from hundreds of miles above sea level as their tenure, which is likely to keep them in Earth’s orbit for at least two more months, stretched on.
Ms. Williams, 59, and Mr. Wilmore, 61, docked at the space station during a test flight of Boeing’s Starliner, which was intended to be a commercial option for ferrying people to and from the station.
rummy666But after a spate of malfunctions called the safety of the return flight into question, NASA leaders decided to bring the Starliner to Earth uncrewed, leaving the two astronauts behind until another spacecraft can take them back.
So Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore had a chance to participate in the long, strange tradition of celebrating the holidays in space, which began in 1968 when the Apollo 8 astronauts read verses from the Book of Genesis while broadcasting a video of the lunar surface to roughly one billion viewers.
ImageA view of the rising Earth greeted Apollo 8 astronauts as they approached from behind the moon on Christmas Eve 1968.Credit...NASAWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.
The accountability office said many of those systems “have critical operational impacts” on air traffic safety and efficiency. Many of them are also facing “challenges that are historically problematic for aging systems,” according to the report.
Robinson’s history of comments that have been widely criticized as antisemitic and anti-gay made him a deeply polarizing figure in North Carolina long before his bid for governor was upended last week by a CNN report that he had called himself a “Black NAZI” and praised slavery while posting on a pornographic website between 2008 and 2012. Now, some of his allies are abandoning him. Most of his senior campaign staff members have resigned. The Republican Governors Association said that its pro-Robinson ads would expire tomorrow and that no new ones had been placed. And former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Robinson in the spring, calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids,” did not mention him once during his rally in the state over the weekend.
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