Everyone calls Francisco Rubio Frank. He was born in the United States, grew up in El Salvador, studied in Colombia, and is a retired soldier in the US Army. He is on the ISS and will not be able to return until September.
His name is Francisco, but everyone calls him Frank. Although he was born in California, his parents are Salvadoran and he himself grew up in El Salvador and studied for several years in Colombia. But then he joined the US Army, where he has an impressive résumé: a paratrooper and pilot with thousands of flight hours, 600 of them in combat missions in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not strange, then, with that experience and a recognized gift of command, that he ended up becoming an astronaut and traveled to the International Space Station after passing a series of demanding tests in which he defeated 18,000 other applicants.
Surely Frank Rubio did not imagine September 21, 2022, the day he arrived at the ISS on a Russian ship Soyuz MS-22, that his six-month stay would be extended for up to six more months. The problem is that the ship that takes the astronauts back and forth had a technical problem (a leak in the cooling system, apparently caused by space debris) that makes a safe trip unfeasible. And to make matters worse, when the Russians were going to send the Progress MS-21 ship for rescue in February, they also detected a problem in the refrigeration system.
Fearful of finding themselves in the presence of a design flaw, they closely inspected another ship, the Soyuz MS-23which was finally sent to the International Space Station on February 24, with half a ton of cargo, including food, clothing and items to clean the station. That will be the ship in which Rubio, in addition to the Russian cosmonauts Serguei Prokopiev and Dmitri Petelin, will be able to return to Earth. For this, however, they will have to wait until September.
Proud of El Salvador
Interviewed by Univisión, Rubio was unconcerned about the possibility of breaking the record for stays at the station, and rather said that he would be happy to return to Earth earlier “to be with my family” (he is married and has 4 children). He also talked about his experiments with hydroponic and aeroponic crops, with which he seeks to advance the sustainable cultivation of food for future trips to the Moon and Mars. “These experiments are used to find out how plants grow in a space environment,” he explained.
Rubio, who is also a doctor, speaks Spanish very well because although he is a US national, he grew up in El Salvador. He himself has highlighted it in his interviews. “I spent my first six years in El Salvador, my first memories are from El Salvador, and for that reason it is a great pride for me to represent the Salvadoran people.”
This Tuesday the damaged Soyuz MS-22 returned to Earth to be inspected and, most important of all, the issue of rescuing astronauts and cosmonauts was settled, in a scenario of strange cooperation between Russia and the United States, in the midst of of the political crisis unleashed by the invasion of Ukraine.
Diego Zúñiga (with information from EFE, Univisión, Euronews, La Prensa Gráfica and El Tiempo)