A NASA astronaut, Barry Wilmore, whose eight day journey to space has turned into an eight month ordeal, will miss out on family holidays, go without hot showers for months, and the face mental and physical toll of an extended stay in space. But his top concern, according to one man close to him, is missing out on his teenage daughter’s last year of high school. 

“As astronauts, they live with contingencies,” a pastor at the Houston-area Providence Baptist Church, Tommy Dahn, tells the Sun. “His only care, that I have heard from him, is that his daughter is a senior in high school this year, and he’s going to miss a big part of that senior year. When he went up, he thought it was going to be for eight days.”

Mr. Wilmore, a Navy captain, is one of a pair of astronauts — the other is Suni Williams — who are now stuck on the International Space Station after arriving in June on the first manned voyage of the troubled Boeing Starliner. The experimental spacecraft was supposed to bring them home a week later, but after experiencing helium leaks and malfunctioning thrusters, NASA decided that as a precaution, the Starliner would return to Earth unmanned in early September.

Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams have been told they’ll have to stay in space until February, when they can catch a ride home on one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX capsules (which is due to dock at the ISS, with a two-man crew, on September 26). 

Life Back Home

Back home in Texas, Mr. Wilmore is an active member and an elder at Providence Baptist Church and he has known the pastor, Mr. Dahn, for about 17 years. They first met in a hallway outside of a nursery when Mr. Wilmore’s daughters — now a sophomore in college and a high school senior — were young. 

“I asked him what he did, and he said that he worked at NASA. That was it,” Mr. Dahn tells the Sun. “He doesn’t use who he is as his identification. He didn’t tell me ‘well I’m an astronaut, and I’ve been a Navy pilot that flew off of aircraft carriers and all these things.’ He is just an employee at NASA and his identity is who he is as a Christian. That’s first and foremost for him.” 

From space, Mr. Wilmore has been in nearly “constant communication” with the church, he says The congregation often prays for him and Mr. Wilmore ministers to fellow members even from space. 

“He’s called a couple of our older shut- ins from the space station, which is a thrill, of course, for anybody,” Mr. Dahn says. Mr. Wilmore even recently called Mr. Dahn’s mother-in-law, who is blind and 93 years old, and “she still talks about” it, he says.

The extended space stay means that Mr. Wilmore will miss out on Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the church’s fall festival, but his family is used to long distance — between his long deployments in the Navy and his three trips to space. 

“So in one sense, the family is independent because they’ve had to be with the lifestyle, and yet this was not expected,” Mr. Dahn adds. 

Mr. Wilmore has used pictures and video footage from space to make a biblical presentation of the Earth’s creation “using Scripture,” Mr. Dahn says. 

“Going to space, just confirmed what he believed before he went to space,” Mr. Dahn says. “He came to the church that we’re at, convinced of God as the Creator and all of this universe is God’s handiwork.”

Life In Space 

As Mr. Wilmore’s family and church community awaits his return, the two astronauts are supplied with ample food, oxygen, water, and clothes in space, NASA says, and former astronauts agree that the pair are likely to be well-stocked. 

“They try to think of everything and delays can happen. We did have an astronaut Frank Rubio who was going on a six month mission that turned into a one year mission,” a former NASA astronaut, Mike Massimino, said recently on the “Today” show. Yet they’re likely missing hot showers and could be facing stress from the unexpected months-long extension, he added.

“Running water in space is a problem because it floats and also it’s kind of a commodity, so you do the best you can with kind of a sponge bath,” he said. “You do the best you can but you certainly miss it.” 

While delays in space of a couple days or weeks can be a “good thing” for astronauts, he said the extra months could present challenges for both the crews and their families. 

“Looking at another six months, that is going to take a shift in mindset not only for the crew but also for their families, people on the ground, because holidays, things happen — good and bad — you miss out,” he said. 

They also face an array of possible health effects associated with long durations in space, including bone density and muscle mass loss, changes to the brian, eyes, and heart, and 100 times the amount of radiation exposure on Earth, according to Baylor’s Center for Space Medicine. 

Learning about the physical health effects is part of the emerging field of space exploration, the head of Virginia Tech’s aerospace and ocean engineering department, Ella Atkins, tells the Sun, and each astronaut who goes into orbit provides new insight into how the human body is affected by being in space. 

“Astronauts exercise extensively to maintain as much muscle mass as possible, but because even though the body doesn’t use its muscles to support itself in gravity, change still occurs,” she notes. “Understanding how the human body reacts in space, and building strategies to mitigate physical deterioration, is critical to the future of space exploration.” 

Despite the challenges of long stays on the space station — especially unexpected ones — Ms. Atkins says most astronauts would greet the extra time with enthusiasm. 

“Most people never have a chance to fly in space for even a moment,” she says. “These astronauts have the privilege of remaining in space for a much longer time than they anticipated.”