NewYork: Technical problems have kept NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who were supposed to go home after a short eight-day mission, up in space for nearly nine months. Their ride home is now scheduled for 19 March aboard SpaceX’s Dragon. The question is whether NASA will provide them with a bonus after their nine-month stay on the ISS.
At NASA, astronauts are considered federal employees, and that means they receive salaries pegged to the GS-15 pay level, the same pay grade as many senior government officials in the U.S. Accordingly, Sunita Williams may get ₹81 lakh for her long duration, up to ₹1.05 crore. There, however, is no overtime or big mission bonus based on time spent there. Astronauts are entitled to a daily bonus of roughly $4 (around ₹347) of incidental expenses from NASA, which means over 287 days, astronauts get an extra $1,148 (about ₹1 lakh).
It takes about three hours for the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to finish its 400 km journey before it splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico. However, returning to our planet’s atmosphere is a challenging task. Experts emphasise that the capsule must hit a very specific point in order to return safely to the atmosphere and avoid an accident. In the past, space missions have encountered issues due to incorrect entry angles.
While Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore pack up to come back home, four fresh faces are headed for the ISS to join at least these two crew members in orbit: Anne McClain, Nicole Aunapu Mann, Takuya Onishi, and Kirill Peskov.