'Abandoned' astro takes recordbreaking ninth spacewalk NASA 'naut Sunita Williams has broken Peggy Whitson's record for total spacewalking time for a female astronaut with a trip outside the International Space Station (ISS) to collect samples from the outpost's exterior. Sunita Williams performing a spacewalk outside the International Space Station (pic: NASA+) Sunita Williams …
The famous Mars Brothers, Cosmo, Astro and Taiko[1]. Fondly remembered for their work on the ISS in "Flywheel, Thruster and Flywheel"[2] and the famous IMAX film "A Night in the Orbit".[3]
[1] plus the boring one whose name nobody ever remembers - and the other one, remembered only by real fans, who never made it to a successful mission.
[2] although only Cosmo and Astro had major roles in this.
[3] a later film, to be called "Go West", was cancelled due to technical difficulties when it was pointed out they'd have to reverse course.
Since when has the word astronaut been abbreviated to 'astro'?
I guess it's also now cosmos, taikos, vyomas and spatios?
Ijon Tichy would not be amused, I am sure.
As for "since when" I would suggest since a large number of "qualified" adults voted for a chap that no one could seriously trust even to open a packet of crisps.
If I were one of the pair on the ISS I might well be pondering the fate of cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev.
Even if it's in quotes, it just keeps getting repeated by media so often as if it's serious that it is getting very very very annoying. Those astronauts are not abandoned or 'abandoned'. NASA made the operational decision based on available capacity to extend the crews stay on the ISS. If they really had to they could have brought them down on Crew 8 easily enough. If it was really neccesary, there could have been another dragon capsule to get them back long before now. Both of them knew there was a possibility they might have to stay longer if Starliner had issues (again). Both of them knew there was a high probability of that happening. This is a (admittedly bit of an extreme) case of a support engineering having to stay longer at a customer site to solve a problem.
