The two NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, stranded on the International Space Station since June because of technical problems on Boeing’s Starliner shuttle in which they were to return to Earth, will not return home until March 2025. In this case, the two astronauts will have spent more than nine months on the ISS far surpassing the ten-day time allotted on last summer’s mission.
Their return had been rescheduled to February 2025 with the Crew-9 mission. In the meantime, however, NASA and SpaceX postponed the launch of another mission, Crew-10, in which the handover to another crew was to take place until March. The four Crew-9 astronauts, Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, Nick Hague and ROSCOSMOS cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, will still have to wait for the arrival of their Crew-10 colleagues to share the results of their work over the past few months before handing over.
In more detail, as reflected in the NASA press release, the postponement of Crew-10’s February launch was necessary to give “NASA and SpaceX teams time to complete development of a new Dragon shuttle for the mission.” The spacecraft is expected to arrive at the company’s Florida facilities in early January. “After careful consideration, the team determined that launching Crew-10 in late March, after the completion of the new Dragon shuttle, was the best option,” the agency points out.
