New date set for the stranded astronauts stuck in space to come home: The wait is almost over
NASA is preparing to bring Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back from the International Space Station earlier than planned.
Two NASA astronauts who have been stuck in space since last summer are set to return to Earth earlier than planned, after a switch of spacecraft by SpaceX.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been stranded at the International Space Station (ISS) since June 2024, having travelled to low Earth orbit for what was supposed to be an eight-to-10-day stay aboard the ISS.
Why are the NASA astronauts stuck in space?
Wilmore and Williams flew to the ISS on a test flight of the Boeing Starliner craft, as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program - an initiative in which the U.S. state space agency has partnered with the private aerospace companies Boeing and SpaceX.
As the Starliner arrived at the ISS last June, program staff noticed that the craft was suffering from a helium leak and thruster problems, leading NASA to bring it back to Earth without its crew on board.
In a statement earlier this month, NASA revealed that SpaceX - a Texas-based company founded by Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest individual - is to ready a previously used version of its Dragon spacecraft, in order to bring forward the targeted launch date of NASA’s Crew-10 mission.
When will the SpaceX craft launch and return?
Scheduled to take off on Wednesday, March 12, the Dragon craft - known as Endurance - will carry the Crew-10 astronauts to the ISS, before bringing back Wilmore and Williams, who belong to NASA’s Crew-9 mission. Wilmore and Williams will be joined on board Endurance by NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
NASA did not provide an exact date on which the SpaceX craft is due to return from the ISS, revealing only that the journey back to Earth will take place after a “several day handover period” between the incoming and outgoing crews.
Before NASA’s recent rescheduling announcement, Wilmore and Williams had reportedly been expected back on Earth in either late March or April.
“Unexpected challenges”
“Human spaceflight is full of unexpected challenges,” NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, Steve Stich, said. “Our operational flexibility is enabled by the tremendous partnership between NASA and SpaceX and the agility SpaceX continues to demonstrate to safely meet the agency’s emerging needs.
“We greatly benefit from SpaceX’s commercial efforts and their proactive approach in having another spacecraft ready for us to assess and use in support of Crew-10.”
Starliner’s checkered history
Since NASA announced that it had awarded Boeing a $4.2 billion contract to build the Starliner in 2014, the project has been beset by glitches and delays, and has gone significantly over budget.
In August last year, Reuters reported that the Starliner had cost the company more than $1.5 billion in overruns since 2016.
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