In a YouTube video posted by NASA, kids sit cross-legged in neat rows in a gymnasium at Sunita L. Williams Elementary School in Needham, Massachusetts. You can see them wave their little hands at the camera, which beams the image roughly 250 miles above Earth to the International Space Station.

They were talking in December with none other than Sunita Williams, the school’s namesake and an astronaut living on the space station.

She should have been home already. A series of technical failures extended an eight-day mission to nine months, leading some news organizations and politicians to play up tension and place blame.

Why We Wrote This

A narrative grew that two astronauts were “stranded” in space. But their training and character may tell a story of adaptability and strength.

But Ms

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