All signs indicated NASA astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Suni Williams were "relatively healthy" upon returning to Earth following a nine-month stay in space, former astronaut and retired U.S. Navy Capt. Winston Scott told Newsmax on Wednesday.
Wilmore and Williams returned to Earth on Tuesday after their mission, which had been expected to last eight days, lasted nine months.
During an appearance on "Wake Up America," Scott was asked to give his biggest takeaway while watching splashdown and recovery in the Gulf of America.
"Well, the biggest takeaway, again, was, first of all, the joy and elation of seeing a safe return, a splashdown, and also seeing the crew emerge from the capsule in healthy conditions," Scott said, "and as you know, it's normal to help them off and use stretchers to transport them."
"But nevertheless, all the thumbs up, the smiles, and the waves indicated to me that they were relatively healthy."
Scott explained that "reentry is different from ascent."
"Ascent is quick. It's 8 1/2 minutes to orbit," Scott told co-hosts Sharla McBride and Marc Lotter. "Reentry's typically an hour, hour and 15 minutes or thereabout. You perform what's called the deorbit burn to slow the capsule down, gravity pulls it back down into the atmosphere."
"When it hits the atmosphere, we call it entry interface. The entry interface from the time they touch down is probably an hour. Gravity during that time very gradually reexerts itself on the human body, so the capsule slows down. They felt heavier and heavier and heavier. They probably felt as if they weighed four or five or six times their own body weight. And then finally they touched down underneath the parachutes."
Scott said NASA officials will focus on various things when debriefing the astronauts.
"We haven't talked about any potential issues that might have arisen from the unexpected stay," he said. "For example, crew integration with the problems in integrating Butch and Suni into the crew that was up there. What about the assignments of tasks? How was that done? There's a change of command, a hierarchy of command. Butch commanded the Starliner capsule, but Nick Hague was command of the station."
"Also, they flew up on Starliner. They came back on Dragon. So there was training that needed to be done for them to return on Dragon. So there are a lot of items beyond just the physical that NASA is going to pursue during the upcoming debriefings with the crew."
Scott added that NASA officials will evaluate "the psychology of spaceflight."
"The psychology of the unexpected stay on the station, and then the unexpected reintegration on Earth with the families after nine months of being gone, that's going to be very critical," he said. "And they're going to probe very, very deeply into all of those issues."
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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