Washington (EFE).- In 2023, Frank Rubio will become the American astronaut who has spent the most time in space, and the 371 days he spent on the International Space Station allows him to underline the need for these types of missions: “This is space exploration. Incredibly expensive, but important,” he said in an interview with EFE.
Flanked by his companions who were part of Expedition 69 — Americans Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg and Emirati Sultan Alnyadi — Rubio acknowledged from NASA headquarters in Washington that the space mission represented a national and individual sacrifice.
“But it's important because of the technology and science we're working with,” the 48-year-old astronaut, who is of Salvadoran descent, told EFE in an interview.
Its mission ended in September last year, according to the US space agency, giving researchers the chance to monitor the effects of long-duration space flights on humans in the run-up to future missions to the Moon.
Challenges for the future, according to Frank Rubio
NASA has delayed the manned Artemis II mission to 2025 and the astronaut Artemis III to September 2026.
“The first challenge is getting back to the moon. Distances are a bit difficult to understand. The station is 250 miles (402.3 kilometers), the moon 250,000 (402,336 kilometers) and of course, Mars, incredibly far away. “It is important to first practice the steps we are going to use to get to Mars and beyond,” says the astronaut.
On the ISS, he insisted, there was no place for politics: “We are doing an incredibly difficult and somewhat risky mission. “We're all doing a better job of not arguing about politics and focusing on the mission.”
For this reason, he and his other colleagues urged the future US president, Democrat Joe Biden or Republican Donald Trump, to consider that the objectives of space exploration exceed the national interest and that they should be protected after next November's election. .
“The agency represents everyone. We do it not only for the benefit of our country but also for the benefit of humanity. (…) Whoever the president is, I hope they will continue to support our mission,” emphasized Rubio, one of the astronauts of the Artemis program, but it is not yet known if he will be selected to go to the moon.
Space has no limits
For his partner Bowen, space exploration knows no bounds. “If we had decided to go to Mars 30 years ago, I believe we would already be there, but it requires political will, commitment, and it would be cheaper to try now than that,” he explained to EFE.
Advances that allow space exploration, he says, have an influence that reaches Earth from space, though not just in the space industry.
“The station modules have to be assembled. It's an engineering feat and it's part of the study. What we learn affects how things are manufactured around the world. That aspect of the study, those little things, are always influential,” he concluded.
