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Wife of NASA astronaut reveals health side effect he's suffering from after arriving back to Earth

Home> News> Health

Updated 16:35 26 Mar 2025 GMTPublished 16:28 26 Mar 2025 GMT

Wife of NASA astronaut reveals health side effect he's suffering from after arriving back to Earth

The road to recovery could be a long one

James Moorhouse

James Moorhouse

Featured Image Credit: WVLT

Topics: Health, NASA, Space

James Moorhouse
James Moorhouse

James is a NCTJ Gold Standard journalist covering a wide range of topics and news stories for LADbible. After two years in football writing, James switched to covering news with Newsquest in Cumbria, before joining the LAD team in 2025. In his spare time, James is a long-suffering Rochdale fan and loves reading, running and music. Contact him via [email protected]

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@JimmyMoorhouse

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The wife of Butch Wilmore, one of the NASA astronauts who was stranded in space for over nine months, has revealed one of the side effects he has been suffering from since his return to Earth.

Butch and Sunni made their long-awaited comeback to Earth last week, after spending nearly a year on the International Space Station, following a mission that was supposed to last just eight days.

Doctors have already warned that the duo are going to face a long road to recovery due to the likely loss of muscle mass and bone density they have experienced, despite the mandatory two hours of exercise both astronauts did each day.

After going through the vigorous medical tests in NASA hospitals, Butch was able to return home to his wife Deanna and his two daughters. He is hoping to make his daughter's graduation next month, but it seems as if the 62-year-old isn't up to much other than resting right now.

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Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams pictured last year before their eight day mission turned into nine months (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams pictured last year before their eight day mission turned into nine months (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

"Barry does say gravity is not his friend right now. And you know the stamina is not there, and so they do have to rest and relax quite a bit because they're just not strong yet", his wife Deanna said.

Wilmore's wife also opened up about the moment the family was reunited with Barry, saying there was 'not a lot of talking, just a lot of hugging and enjoying the moment'.

The pair's daughter, Daryn, 19 years old, added online that her dad is is 'doing good, it’s rough, but he’s a trooper'.

According to NASA, both astronauts are undergoing a 45-day reconditioning programme, where they have to undergo two hours of physical training with specialised trainers.

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The stranded NASA astronauts on the ISS (NASA)
The stranded NASA astronauts on the ISS (NASA)

Speaking to The Guardian, Swinburne University astrophysicist Alan Duffy described what a continuous lack of gravity can do a person's body.

He wrote: "The lack of gravity causes significant, and irreparable, bone density loss. It also causes muscles to waste in your arms, legs, trunk and elsewhere, including your heart, which, because it doesn’t have to pump blood against gravity, has to work much less hard."

The astronaut's body also builds up fluids in their heads, leading to what Duffy described as a feeling akin to a 'constant cold'.

The fact that both were able to walk again less than 24 hours after splashdown is certainly promising, but the radiation they were exposed to can cause permanent DNA damage. An experiment involving twins found that the one sent up to space mostly recovered the damage after six months, but that some genes had been permanently changed.

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In addition to their 45-day programme though, they can also look forward to receiving an invite to the White House from President Donald Trump.

Additional words by Joshua Nair

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