The teen daughter of NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore has provided new insight into how her father is fairing after being stranded in space for more than nine months.
Asked about how her dad’s body was adjusting to life back on Earth, Daryn Wilmore, 19, wrote on TikTok: ‘It’s rough.’ But she said her father was ‘doing good’, describing him as ‘a trooper’.
Her father and his crewmate, Sunita Williams, will face months of rehabilitation to counteract the debilitating muscle and bone loss as well as structural changes to the heart that occurred in the low gravity environment of space.
Despite the long road to recovery they face, Daryn said her father will receive a meagre $5 extra per day he was in space as compensation.
After spending 286 International Space Station (ISS), that works out to be around $1,380.
‘They get five extra dollars a day that’s it,’ Daryn said in the comments section of a TikTok video she posted Thursday.
Wilmore and Williams were only supposed to be on the ISS for eight days, but after launching aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on June 5, the ship suffered helium leaks and thruster failures that ultimately delayed their return until March 18.
The $1,380 payout will be tacked onto the astronauts’ annual salaries, which fall somewhere between $125,133 and $162,672 per year.
Barry Wilmore’s daughter Daryn (left) has opened up about her dad’s long-awaited return to Earth on social media
Former NASA astronaut Cady Coleman told the Washingtonian that astronauts only receive their basic salary without overtime benefits for ‘incidentals’ – a small amount they are ‘legally obligated to pay you’.
‘For me it was around $4 a day,’ she said. Coleman received approximately $636 in incidental pay for her 159-day mission between 2010 and 2011.
‘They get their regular salary, no overtime, and NASA takes care of transportation, lodging, and food,’ the Washingtonian reports.
Although it was unclear whether the $4 figure had since risen to adjust for inflation.
Neil Armstrong was paid a salary of $27,401 and was the highest paid of those aboard the Apollo 11 flight in 1969, according to the Boston Herald.
GS-15 rates last year ranged from $123,041 to $159,950 at the upper end of the scale.
But during a press conference today, President Donald Trump said he would pay the Starliner crew overtime for the extra days they spent in space.
‘If I have to, I’ll pay it out of my own pocket,’ Trump told reporters.
Daryn Wilmore, 19, revealed her dad’s meagre compensation pay in the comments of a TikTok video she posted Thursday, saying: ‘They get five extra dollars a day that’s it’
She also revealed how her dad is doing physically after spending more than nine months in low gravity, which causes debilitating muscle and bone loss as well as other health issues
After splashing down off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida the pair were helped onto stretchers by NASA’s medical crew. This is standard practice for astronauts whose muscles have been weakened by their time in microgravity
Williams and Wilmore unable to walk on their own immediately after they emerged from the SpaceX Dragon capsule that brought them home on Tuesday.
As Earth’s gravity bore down on their bodies for the first time in months, NASA’s recovery team helped them onto stretchers and wheeled them off for routine health checks, which is standard for astronauts returning from long-term ISS missions.
On Wednesday, NASA shared photos of Williams and Wilmore already making a surprising recovery as they were walking under their own power in normal gravity.
But Williams looked noticeably frail and still had an IV drip in her arm from receiving fluids.
The duo will still need extensive physical therapy to recondition their muscles and bones, and it take months for them to return to their pre-flight health status.
Based on the length of their mission, ‘it will likely take at least three to six months for them to feel fully normal again, and probably longer for their spine to return to pre-flight condition,’ Dr Ehsan Jazini, a spine surgeon at VSI, told DailyMail.com.
Research has shown that roughly a third of astronauts who spend six months in space go on to suffer chronic back pain, and nearly half experience acute pain after returning to Earth.
That’s because low gravity causes deterioration, straightening and lengthening of the spine, as well as weakening of the abdominal and back muscles that support it.
This, along with damage to the rest of their musculoskeletal system, can leave astronauts significantly debilitated after long-term ISS missions.
Dr Jazini said their rehab program will likely include progressive core and spinal stabilization exercises, stretching and mobility work, slow reintroduction to high-impact activities and monitoring for signs of herniation or chronic pain issues.
‘NASA’s medical teams are well-equipped to handle this, but given the length of their mission, a longer recovery timeline should be expected,’ he said.
‘Just like I tell my patients, they’ll need a lot of patience and consistency in the rehabilitation process.’
Williams (pictured here in the center) sparked health concerns over her ‘visibly thin’ appearance after she and Wilmore finally returned from their extended space mission
Wilmore is pictured here with what looks to be an IV in his arm
Like all astronauts, Williams and Wilmore exercised for at least two hours per day on the ISS to reduce bone and muscle loss.
But the longer the human body stays in space, the more difficult it can be to recover from this damage once they return to Earth.
‘Even with pre-landing conditioning practices, their return to gravity is still a major adjustment to their spine, as nothing fully replicates that sudden shift back to Earth’s gravity,’ Dr Jazini said.
Other astronauts have found that it can take up to 1.5 times the length of their mission to recover, which means it could take Williams and Wilmore more than a year to feel like themselves again.
Over the course of this nine-month-long saga, Daryn posted heartbreakingly candid videos about her family’s situation on TikTok.
In a January, she appeared to let her frustration out in response to a comment on one of her videos.
Someone commented, ‘I’m so sorry NASA is actually evil…’ to which Daryn replied: ‘Less evil more… incompetent.’
In another video posted in February, she suggested that ‘politics’ and ‘negligence’ played a role in her dad’s delayed return.
After her dad returned to Earth this week, Daryn told DailyMail.com there were ‘definitely some mess-ups’ that led to this outcome.
Referring to her past comments, Daryn said: ‘I really just meant that there was different things within the company that led to the decision of them staying, which was a good decision and the safest one.’
‘I don’t know much as I do not actively work at NASA, but the people there work hard and even though there was definitely some mess-ups with this Starliner mission, there was a lot of wins.’
The Boeing Starliner spacecraft experienced thruster failures and helium leaks during its mission to bring Williams and Wilmore to the ISS in June.
Both of them safely made it to the space station, but in August, NASA decided that it would be too risky to let the pair fly home on the faulty spacecraft.
Starliner was sent back to Earth uncrewed in September, leaving the two astronauts behind to wait for a ride home on SpaceX’s Crew-9 return flight.
Now that they’re back on Earth, they will begin a 45-day rehabilitation program that will require them to exercise for two hours per day, seven days per week, according to NASA.
