If an eight-day work trip unexpectedly turned into a nine-month stay, most would expect overtime pay—but not Nasa astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who spent an additional 278 days aboard the International Space Station without any extra compensation.
“While in space, Nasa astronauts are on official travel orders as federal employees,” confirmed Jimi Russell, a spokesperson for the agency’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, via email.
For more than nine months, Williams and Wilmore were confined to their workplace—a collection of modules orbiting Earth every 90 minutes. According to Russell, space station astronauts receive no additional payment for overtime, holidays or weekends.
The agency covers their transport, food and accommodation costs. Similar to other federal employees travelling for work, they receive a daily allowance for incidental expenses, as explained by Russell. This per diem payment substitutes for travel expense reimbursements.
Russell stated that the incidentals allowance is £5 per day regardless of location. Therefore, alongside their annual salary of approximately $152,258, Wilmore and Williams received roughly $1,430 for their 286-day space mission.
However, Williams and Wilmore regarded their extended stay positively.
“This is my happy place,” Williams stated to reporters in September. “I love being up here in space. It’s just fun, you know?” as reported by the New York Times.
According to The New York Times, NASA astronaut Clayton Anderson, who spent 152 days aboard the International Space Station in 2007, reportedly received a daily allowance of about $1.20, amounting to a total of $172.
Anderson expressed on social media in 2022 that whilst being an astronaut was extraordinary and his ideal profession, “but it IS a government job with government pay.”
“I would have done WAY better with mileage!” he added.