Morning Wire - From Launch to Crisis: The Mission That Left Astronauts Stuck in Orbit

Episode Date: March 14, 2026

What happens when a space mission goes wrong? NASA astronaut and retired Navy Captain Butch Wilmore joins Morning Wire to share the incredible story of being stranded in space for nearly 300 days after a spacecraft malfunction. He breaks down what went wrong with the mission, the dangers astronauts face during emergencies, and how his faith helped him endure the ordeal. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.- - -Ep. 2681- - -Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3- - -Today's Sponsors:DeleteMe - Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to https://joindeleteme.com/WIRE and use promo code WIRE at checkout.Alliance Defending Freedom - Visit https://JoinADF.com/WIRE or text 'WIRE' to 83848 to learn more.- - -Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacymorning wire,morning wire podcast,the morning wire podcast,Georgia Howe,John Bickley,daily wire podcast,podcast,news podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We have to dock because the situation we're in, I'm not sure we can get back to Earth. That was retired naval aviator and NASA astronaut Captain Butch Wilmore, talking about being stuck in space for nearly a year after a spacecraft malfunctioned in orbit. In this episode, we sit down in studio with Captain Wilmore to discuss his famous trip into space, what went wrong, what it was like being stranded in space, and how his experience and faith turned a near disaster. into a true space odyssey. I'm Daily Wire, executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Hal.

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Barry, thank you so much for coming and joining us. Wonderful to be with you. Thank you for the opportunity. So we covered it at the time, but you were stuck up in space for 300 days. how much, that was last year, how much longer than expected was that? It was a few months. We originally planned it was a test flight, the crew flight test, CFT mission for the first, it was the first crude flight of the Boeing Starliner.

You know, in the history of human spaceflight, there's been six first flights, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Space Shuttle, the SpaceX Dragon, and then this one was the Starliner. So it was a six first flight of a crude spacecraft, and like I said, in U.S. history, human spaceflight history. And so it was a test flight. And we had a whole gamut of tests that we were doing on the way up, then rendezvous and dock, and then a bunch of tests while we were attached to the space station, and then a whole litany of tests on the way back before we get the de-orbit burning into the atmosphere and, of course,

parachutes, and then we're supposed to touch down in White Sands, New Mexico. So that was the plan. And then day one was great. The launch, the first day of test went wonderfully well. Day two was the issue when we ran into some issues that we didn't expect that created the scenario where we wound up stuff. for those extended period of time. How long was the original plan to be up there?

You know, they say eight days, but it was really, it was two-ish weeks. You know, we've heard eight was a number that was put out way before we launched, and that's kind of what the media glommed onto, and that's fine. But it was going to be two weeks or less. That was the original plan, because we wanted to have a time to be attached to the space station, do some quiescent tests with the spacecraft, having never been in that environment for that long a period of time. And then, of course, climb back aboard and do all our tests coming back.

So I would say two weeks would have been important. So there was some flexibility at the beginning, which surprises me, actually. It was. But not, you weren't prepared for months, obviously. Almost a year. So a couple of weeks and it turns into a month, two months, etc. Can you kind of walk us through? What was that like for you?

Did you know immediately that this was going to be much longer? Or was it a continual surprise for you? That's a very, very fair, good question. The process did not, you know, go long, long, long for me or sunny. we were in the spacecraft, obviously, when we had our problems. And we will go into the, maybe we'll go into the problems in a little bit. But basically the situation we were in, we lost the ability to fully control the spacecraft. And I'm on the controls manually and doing my best to maintain control,

trying to see if we could get in a process where we could dock. So the thought process was this. We have to dock because the situation we're in, I'm not sure we can get back to Earth. We didn't know why we were losing thrusters. We dropped four thrusters, which affects, our ability to fully control the spacecraft, six degree of freedom control. You got pitch, roll, yaw, that's attitude. And then you've got translation four and aft, up and down, left and right. So that's three and three, that's six degrees of freedom. And we lost the ability, it never happened

before in human spaceflight to fully control the spacecraft. And so in that scenario, we have to dock. I'm not sure we can make it back to Earth like this. I can, I'm not sure I can control it enough to do with de-orbit burn and all those things you have to do to make it back to Earth. And so the next thought beyond that was if we dock, I'm not sure we're coming back in this spacecraft. So normally, I understand, people would think, you know, the process goes on, are you coming back, are you coming back, or you not? I mean, before we ever docked, we knew the chances were slim that we were being able to climb back aboard and come back if we were able to dock at all. Was the docking process hazardous?

In the situation we were in, yes, it was. I've seen a lot of sci-fi movies, which makes me thinks they're very precarious. So it was, it was without the control. You're taking a big spacecraft, the space station, the passive spacecraft. It's just traveling around the planet, 17,500 miles an hour, five miles a second. So you're orbiting every 90 minutes. And you got the active spacecraft, which is us working to get in position to connect, right? And so with degraded thrusters, that active connection is degraded, obviously. And the situation we were in, it would have been very difficult to dock, having four. thrusters down, but, you know, us on board and the ground teams came up with a plan very quickly,

and we were, go through the process of trying to see if we could get these thrusters back, because basically the thrusters don't just quit. I mean, it's the computer system. It says, okay, I'm taking analysis from all these parameters from these various thrusters as they fire. Oh, you're not performing up to the standards. I'm felling you off. You're done. And then it's, that's basically what the computer did. So to get the thrusters back, we had to send signals to the thrusters to fire them and only them. So I had to be hands off on the controls, which was not optimal because it's, again, I'll get into that in a second, but it had to be hands off the control so I could send the signal to that thruster, a given thruster, to fire, assess how much did it

fire enough to pull it back into the set? And then this fault detection indication response, this fitter software that pulled it out of the system, you know, pulled it, felled it off to begin with, we had to cancel that fitter for each of those thrusters as we would bring them back. So now you're without that fail-safe software to shut the thruster down in many scenarios. So we had to dock like that with those thrusters that we were able to get back. Fortunately, like I said, we were able to get thrusters back. And during the time we had the four thrusters down, we knew that was really our only option is to get thrusters back. And fortunately, we were able to do that.

And we wound up docking. We had five thrusters total to fail. Fortunately, we didn't have five failed simultaneously. four failed, we got two back, we had two. Then the fifth one failed, so we went back to three. So basically, I'm kind of skipping ahead, I know, but fault tolerance is built into all systems, every system, even the thruster system, meaning we build dual fault tolerant. I'll have two failures and I can still maintain whatever this function is.

So we lose the first thruster, it doesn't affect our fault tolerance. We're okay. We lose a second thruster. Now we've, we're now gone from dual fault tolerant to single fault. tolerant. We lose the third thruster. Now we're zero fault tolerant to maintaining six degree of freedom control. And then when we lose the fifth, the fourth thruster, we've lost the ability to control at least one axes and all the other five remaining, you know, axes are degraded because of the thrusters that we lost. How long was the period of time where you and I, you were

with one other astronaut in this craft? How long was the period of time where you were trying to figure this out where you didn't know how you were going to dock. Was that a period of hours, days, minutes? It was hours. It was initially the first thruster we lost when we, it's not impacting our fault tolerance, occurred hours before we wound up docking. When we lost the second thruster is when I came on the controls after that. And from the time I came on the controls until we finally, I gave control back to the automation system was about an hour and a half. So it was an hour and a half during this evolution. And the time that we were down six degree of freedom control was, you know, it seemed like an eternity. But in the big scheme of things, it wasn't that long, but still the unknown. Sure. And the space station is a moving target, correct? Was this happening at, were you coordinating with them? Is there anything they can do? There's nothing. No. The space station, yeah, it's fully passive. It's in an attitude. We maintain a certain attitude. And it's just orbiting the planet. It's not like moving. It's in a stationary orbit at the same altitude. It's just going around the planet. But so we're. We're we. We're going to get the same speed. And as we maneuver to dock, that's the part where, you know,

our speed changes a little bit, but there's orbital mechanics, implications, what happens when two spacecraft fly in close proximity to each other, how they maneuver based on orbital mechanics that comes into play. And all of that's going through my head as we're putting these, you know, putting these control inputs in. Good thing. It's not rocket surgery. Right. So you dock, but you already know we're going to be here for a while. So walk us through that, the initial conversations. What were you planning on from that moment? How are you prepping for what's coming?

That's a very good question. So we dock, we finally open the hatches, we do our handshakes and smiles, and it's all on video, right, welcome aboard. As soon as that was done, I pulled Matthew Dominica's site, who was already on Space Station, another fellow naval aviator,

and we had a discussion about what it transpired. He, being a pilot type, understood exactly what was going on. As a matter of fact, like, you know, we always think of the next worst failure. So when we lost, when we were down four thrusters, I'm thinking, what if we lose a fifth thruster? Would I'll be able to control it all? I have no idea. We've never gone this far. We've never, we're in uncharted territory here.

And I'm also thinking, what if we lose communication? Well, Matthew Dominic, Pojo's his call son. He's thinking the same thing. He's already prepared to give me some green lights through a window in the in the dragon capsule that points where we could see it to say, come on aboard, if that were to happen. We didn't lose communication, but I'm already thinking if we do, what am I going to do? And he's already thinking the same. How are we going to give them a signal that they're clear to come aboard?

And so all of these things, we're taking place real time. We have our discussion. Immediately I call the senior flight director, Vincent LaCourt, because we always train for scenarios where you have to evacuate the space station. One of many scenarios we train for. What if you lose pressure? What if a satellite breaks up and it sends debris and it impacts the station, you lose pressure?

What if you have a fire, you know, ammonia leaks, any number of scenarios where you could have to leave the space station in an emergency? It's never happened, but we train for that and we get in our spacecraft and we leave in specific order. We had three crude spacecraft up at the time, the Soyuz, the SpaceX Dragon, and then us. how do we we got a six spacecraft and I called and said what are what are our options what do we do what do we plan for and he says well butch we've never had to evacuate the station I'm like yes sir I know that um that's really starliner's your only option because the soy use is too small there's no way we can fit in it it's very teeny

dragon has space but there's no system where we can plug our spacesuits into their system for the environmental control and get oxygen all those things, that, you know, communication, all that. There's no, there's no means, there's no seats for us. So the best option for the, actually for the first two months was Starliner. If in that scenario, if we had to, and we actually did climb aboard. We had a satellite that did break up. They were concerned that the debris might come into our orbit. So we all went to our, in the middle of the night, we all go to our spacecraft. We closed the hatch. Oh, my goodness. And we did all of that. And are we leaving or are we not? And in this, we're in the Starliner. So what kind of effects did being up there so long have on your body?

So in space without the force of gravity, you extend. And for myself, that extension, the forces or the forces on your joints go away. So really there's no joint pain. As a matter of fact, you know, in jet aircraft, we're sitting here right now, we've got one times a pull of gravity, 9.8 meters per second square, 32.2 feet per second square to the center of the earth. But in a jet aircraft, as you pull, you can increase that fill of the G force, you know, up to whatever the aircraft will pull. And in my case, F-18, is about seven and a half times my body weight. while you're fighting another aircraft and you're turning your head and looking and maintaining sight and during all of that over years, my neck is a mess.

And even now to turn my to the right past this far hurts, I can turn the left further, but it's just my neck's a mess. No pain in space. All that went away. I could turn my head, no problem. We touch down, we splash down before they pick us up out of the water. My neck is already hurting. That's how gravity.

Gravity is not your friend when you come back to space. And there's a process of how it comes back. So your neurovisstibular and semicircular canals in your inner ear to give you balance. They've not been stimulated by gravity. As a matter of fact, when I was in space towards the end, we had a press conference. And Sonny and Nick Hague spun me. I went in a ball. They spun me like for 15 seconds as fast as you could spin.

And they spun me. And I came out of that and stopped. Nothing. I was just like I was normal before because my semi-circuitary. circular canals had gone completely dormant. It was like I hadn't even spun at all. And what does that do? Make it so you can't hear? No, no. You can still hear. It's just your balance. Oh, your balance. They had just gone, after 10 months almost, they'd gone dormant. But when you come back to Earth, now all of a sudden they're stimulated by gravity. Your body goes,

ooh, I'm not used to this. And your whole system, your structure's not used to holding up your weight. So there's, you know, muscles that we work out. We work out every single day in space. But there's small muscles throughout your structure that you can't work out well. And now they have to perform. So they get tense and your whole body gets tense. And oh, there's a significant amount of pain. Your body in zero gravity, the blood is floating in your system. So your body says, hey, you've got too many red blood cells.

So it starts purging red blood cells. You come back from space and you're deficient in red blood cells. So you're anemic. That's what transports the oxygen through your system. So your stamina is not what it was. And all that takes time to come back. How anemic would you be when you come back? Well, let's say I go out and I work in the yard for 10 hours. No big deal. I've got about three in me when I first get back because you just get fatigued. And your body's not used to, you doesn't have enough blood cells to transfer that oxygen to keep you going. So you do recover. Do you fully recover?

Well, that's a good question. You know, the second mission I had, the first long duration I had in 2014, 2015, I came back and there was something in the middle of my back on the right side that never went away. I mean, constant. pain, different levels of pain, depending on my exertion, but 100% of the time it was there, and always has been. When I went to space this time, gone. It came back, it's back, and it's back now worse than, like right now I'm sitting here. It's always there. I don't know what it is. I'm all right. It looked at it. They can't figure it out, but there's something going on back here that has stuck with me. It's that thorn in my side and continues to be there and has been for over 10 years now. And that's just one of the joys of spaceflight you carry with you, at least I do. Now, you mentioned your memoir, and I wanted to ask you about that.

Yeah. What is the focus? What would readers expect with this book? Well, I'll tell you, the memoir, it is that, is a story of the life. And it includes everything from junior high football to courting my wife, combat missions that I flew, obviously space missions, things that I flew. And I wrote it for my daughters. I started writing for my daughters even before the Starliner stuff started because my wife and I, we had our daughters. we were in our 40s, so we'd lived a life before they were born.

And so I wrote it for them. The reason I published it, though, is because the story, we wrapped around the Starliner narrative with kind of flashbacks to life, because I think it gives a message of hope in trying times, hope in the now. And also, the story continues, and it gives a message of hope for all eternity. It comes through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And so I think it's a book of hope, and it's an intriguing story. I think that people enjoy reading.

I think it's an enjoyable read. but with a message that really has meaning, especially when you think about, you know, eternal hope. There's nothing better than that, nothing more comforting, as we said earlier. Indeed. And that's why I published it. All right. Well, Barry, we really appreciate you coming on.

Thank you. And will you just remind us what the name of your book is? Yes. Well, I learned when you publish a book and you go through a publisher, you don't get to pick the name. So the publisher picks stuck in space. And it does tell that story. And it tells truly where we stuck. And we go through it.

I won't let it out. but it'll say exactly what that means and why the title is that. And you can get it on Butchwhomore.com. You can get it on Amazon. There's Kendall version. I actually spoke it so you can get an audio version as well with hearing my voice speak it. Not that that's exciting, but that option is out there. And like I said, I think people will enjoy it, just reading it, but I think more so that the message will come cloud and clear.

All right. Well, thank you so much for coming in studios. It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thank you. That was Naval Aviator and NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore, and this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.