Oleg Kononenko shakes hands with Suni Williams during a change of command ceremony on the ISS on September 22. (credit: NASA+)

“Not quite the plan, but here we are”: NASA ritual and the reintegration of the Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts

by Deana L. Weibel
Monday, September 30, 2024

On September 22, 2024, a strange rupture in the normal activities of the International Space Station (ISS) and its constantly changing crew came to an official close with a traditional “change of command ceremony.” (Dinner 2024) The circumstances leading to this ceremony, however, were anything but traditional. The Expedition 71 crew had arrived on April 6, 2024, and Oleg Kononenko took his place as the ISS commander. Exactly two months later, on June 6, 2024, the Boeing Crew Flight Test (CFT) brought veteran astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore to the ISS for what was supposed to be an eight-day mission. When certain issues with the Starliner capsule “Calypso” became apparent, NASA, after some deliberation, decided to send the spacecraft back to Earth without its passengers. This left Williams and Wilmore as unexpected, un-planned-for crew, both part of and apart from, Expedition 71.

I was contacted by journalist Elizabeth Howell, who was taking a very social scientific view of the situation for an article she was writing (Howell 2024a). She was curious about the “the unusual-ness of a mission transition in space without that ritual.” While this might seem like a strange question to many in the space community, I immediately understood what she meant. When anthropologists like me study humanity, we look at people all over the world. We are simultaneously interested in what human beings have in common (many of us believe in an essential sameness in the human brain and cognition.) At the same time there is also a lot of variation, with cultural differences often serving as a way to mark group identity. One thing that all human groups seem to have common is the existence of rituals. Rituals may be religious in nature, but they don’t have to be. The most important thing about rituals is probably what they do, which is often to indicate transitions between different states of being or different identities.

To use the example of a religious ritual, baptism is a way that some Christian churches recognize a birth and show acceptance and approval of that birth by welcoming the infant into the community (other churches delay baptism to a later age.) In churches where infant baptism takes place, the activity may have a supernatural function, but it also serves a social purpose. The baptism ceremony reminds the baby’s parents that they are supported by a group who cares about them, while simultaneously reminding the group that they have a new responsibility to their newest member. Many rituals are ways that human societies convince themselves they have some control over something that happens naturally. Think of a bar mitzvah ceremony: You can’t stop your child from becoming an adult, but a ritual recognizing this transition and reintegrating your child as an adult gives you something to control and a way to give your blessing.

Non-religious groups with exclusive membership (like NASA) also rely on rituals. When a person joins the military they may go through basic training, or boot camp. This is a secular form of “initiation rite” that denotes another transition, from outsider status to insider status. The military itself, in all of its branches, tends to be full of rituals. Hope College Religion professor Dru Johnson, for instance, describes military ritual practices in his book Human Rites: The Power of Rituals, Habits, and Sacraments. Johnson explains that “basic military training may be one of the most ritualized experiences in the world. It blows religious rituals out of the water in terms of meticulous performances. The military scripts and choreographs everything so that it’s done just so: picking up a fork in the chow hall, folding underwear with tweezers and a ruler, marching in exact synchronicity, and on and on.” (Johnson 2019) He goes on to explain that the military rituals he had to follow during his Air Force training served to encourage trust and commitment, creating a sense of cohesion. Rituals are also associated with circumstances where humans may have less control than they would like. They are a way of improving luck or asking for help from the powers that be, and NASA, like the nautical culture that preceded it, tends to have many rituals and superstitions meant to smooth out changes and make transitions easier.

When less predictable changes happen, like the shift in the Apollo 13 mission from a Moon landing to a desperate race for survival, or when Sergei Krikalev went to the Mir space station in May 1991 as a member of the USSR and returned in March 1992 to a transformed country, Russia, sometimes these rituals of transition get lost. We saw what happens when rituals were lost during the months of the COVID-19 quarantine. Research done during and after that time by anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and others suggested that life transitions like funerals did not have the same effect of closure when they were done online, and that the transition into married life for couples wed during the quarantine without families and friends being present was more difficult.

For Williams and Wilmore, there was a transition, a mostly unexpected one, from being Starliner crewmembers to becoming surplus crewmembers on the ISS. Reports indicated that the ISS crew had to ration food to some extent, that Williams and Wilmore had to borrow clothing, and ended up taking on chores already assigned to Expedition 71 crewmembers. (Kluger 2024) The whole situation left Williams and Wilmore in a strange “halfway” identity, where they were CFT crew, then lost that identity, but never fully became Expedition 71 crew. In the same way that the aforementioned cosmonaut Krikalev (who was living in the Mir space station when the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991) seemed to be both Soviet and Russian while being neither Soviet nor Russian, taking on a temporary “statelessness,” Williams and Wilmore found themselves oddly “missionless.” Without ritual, reintegration becomes difficult.

When I was first asked about this situation and the impact of the lack of ritual, I assumed this would stand out in the history of NASA as a situation similar to (although far less dangerous than) Apollo 13, another event where unexpected turns changed the mission into something else entirely, creating a new moment in history. The CFT mission would be remembered a rupture in the routine, unmarked by ritual, perhaps the beginning of something new. I thought Williams and Wilmore would remain liminal (literally “in the doorway,” despite its contemporary use in “liminal spaces” games), half-CFT and half-Expedition 71, fitting into neither fully, left to do the cast-off chores in borrowed clothing … at least for a while.

I was wrong. The purpose of ritual is to smooth over such ruptures, patch holes in normal goings-on, and give approval to things we can’t control. Rituals have the power to take people removed from their normal place in society by circumstance or choice and reintegrate them in good standing. In this case, crews were changed, missions were adjusted, and Williams and Wilmore were pulled out of their liminality into fully-realized, much more acceptable new roles, as members of Expedition 72. Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson were cut from the mission (Howell 2024b) to make room, and leave available return flight accommodations, for Williams and Wilmore. Although the CFT astronauts were never meant to be part of Expedition 72, they were not only brought into the mission, but Sunita Williams was named the commander of the ISS until SpaceX Crew 9’s expected return to Earth in February 2025. With this decision, the “liminal” CFT crew, who had become weirdly “missionless,” were given a clear identity. The decision to make Williams commander gave this shift undeniable emphasis and allowed a classic ritual of transition to take place, the change of command ceremony.

The change of command ceremony was a reworking of an existing Navy ritual brought to the ISS by Expedition 1 Commander, William M. (Bill) Shepherd. The original change of command ceremony (common throughout different military branches) seems to have started in the 1700s, when “organizational flags were developed with color arrangements and symbols unique to each unit. The flag served as a rallying point and reminder of their allegiance to their leader during battle. To this flag and its commander, military members dedicated their loyalty and trust. Because of its symbolic nature, when a change of command took place, the flag was passed to the individual assuming command in the presence of the entire unit.” (“Change of Command Ceremony,” 403rd Wing)

Astronauts Brent Jett (left) and Bill Shepherd ring a bell on the ISS during the STS-97 shuttle mission to the ISS. (credit: NASA)

The change of command ceremony first occurred on the ISS when Expedition 1 commander Shepherd welcomed the new Expedition 2 commander, Yury V. Usachev. Instead of passing an organizational flag, however, the transition was marked by the ringing of a bell, described in the April 6, 2001, Space Center Roundup (a JSC employee newspaper) as, “an old Navy tradition of ringing a bell to announce the arrival or departure of someone to a ship.” (“Welcome Home Expedition 1,” 2001) STS-97 mission commander Brent W. Jett’s status as a US Navy captain probably contributed to the use of the bell. The change of command ceremony has continued since then over dozens of missions, creating a sense of normalcy and comfortable routine during times of transition. In a 2020 interview, Bill Shepherd explained:

(We) thought, you know, the Navy has a long tradition of doing this, and it’s the Royal Navy in the UK, the Russian Navy does it, the U.S. Navy does it. Then you have this little ceremony where you say, OK, fine, here’s the crew, and we’re going to tell you something, and here’s the new guy who’s in charge. And this is what he’s going to do, and so it’s a change of command. And we thought that was a really important cultural thing to introduce to the space station. (“Expedition 1,” NASA, October 6, 2023)

On September 22, 2024, the Change of Command Ceremony took place again, with Expedition 71 commander Oleg Kononenko passing authority over the ISS to Expedition 72 commander Sunita Williams. He passed a space station hatch key to Williams, saying he was leaving the ISS in her “delicate hands.” (Dinner 2024) The bell was rung, marking the completion of the ritual and calling to mind (at least to me!) the way the first kiss of a newly married couple after their wedding marks the start of their new life together. Williams and Wilmore were completely reintegrated as NASA crewmembers when that bell was rung – they were now full members of Expedition 72.

After that moment it was Williams’ turn to speak. First, she acknowledged the strangeness of the liminality she and Wilmore had experienced, stating, “This Expedition 71 has taught all of us a lot about flexibility, the ability to adapt to a number of amazing things. A lot of things weren't planned and somehow you guys put it all together and did it. It's pretty amazing, pretty impressive. You adopted Butch and I, even though that was not quite the plan, but here we are as part of the family.” Then, stepping into her new commander role, she did exactly as expected and thanked the departing crew members—Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, and Tracy Caldwell-Dyson—with warmth and friendship. (“NASA’s Suni Williams Becomes ISS Commander for 2nd Time in Ceremony,” YouTube)

Social sciences like anthropology and sociology have long argued that “liminal states are threatening both to the self and to the social group” with rituals serving to “eas(e) the transition from one place in the social structure to another.” (Gusfield 1984) Social groups tend to abhor liminality the same way nature is often said to abhor a vacuum. By moving Sunita Williams into a command position on the ISS, a transition that prompted a ritual, NASA helped heal the strangeness and uncertainty of the CFT crew’s extended stay on the ISS, reintegrating the so-called “stranded” astronauts (Rannard 2024) into Expedition 72 and restoring normalcy.

References

“Change of Command Ceremony.” 403rd Wing. Accessed September 26, 2024.

Dinner, Josh. “Boeing Starliner Astronaut Suni Williams Takes ISS Command as 8-Day Mission Turns into 8 Months (Video).” Space.com, September 24, 2024.

“Expedition 1.” NASA, October 6, 2023.

Gusfield, J. “Secular Symbolism: Studies of Ritual, Ceremony, and the Symbolic Order in Modern Life.” Annual Review of Sociology 10, no. 1 (January 1, 1984): 417–35.

Howell, Elizabeth. “Boeing’s Starliner Astronauts Speak Publicly Today for 1st Time in 2 Months: Watch It Live.” Space.com, September 13, 2024a.

Howell, Elizabeth. “SpaceX Crew-9 Dropped 2 NASA Astronauts from ISS Mission, but They Were Prepared (Video).” Space.com, September 26, 2024b.

Johnson, Dru. Human rites: The power of rituals, habits, and sacraments. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2019.

Kluger, Jeffrey. “How Two Stranded Astronauts Are Camping out in Space.” Time, August 13, 2024.

“NASA’s Suni Williams Becomes ISS Commander for 2nd Time in Ceremony.” YouTube. Accessed September 26, 2024.

Rannard, Georgina. “Being Left behind by Starliner Craft Was Hard, Say Stranded Astronauts.” BBC News, September 13, 2024.

“Welcome Home Expedition 1.” Space Center Roundup. April 6, 2001.

Deana L. Weibel, Ph.D. is a Professor of Anthropology at Grand Valley State University with a joint appointment in GVSU’s Brooks College Religious Studies program. She has held a lifelong interest in voyages, studying pilgrimage, tourism, and scientific expeditions and the cultural, religious, and spiritual meanings they, and the places visited, hold for those who travel. A member of the American Anthropological Association and a Fellow of the Explorers Club (and current chair of the Chicago/Great Lakes Chapter of the latter), Weibel has conducted ethnographic field research in a number of settings, including the Black Madonna shrine of Rocamadour, France; Spaceport America; and the Vatican Observatory. Her website is http://www.deanaweibel.space.

Note: we are now moderating comments. There will be a delay in posting comments and no guarantee that all submitted comments will be posted.

Home