Two astronauts who traveled to the International Space Station aboard Boeing Starliner in difficulty more than six months ago will not return to Earth until at least March 2025, NASA announced Tuesday.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams traveled to the space station aboard the Starliner in June. Their trip was initially expected to last only eight to ten days, but multiple problems with the Starliner prompted a worried NASA, out of an abundance of caution, to leave them at the space station and will return the capsule to empty Earth in September.
The same month, a SpaceX Crew-9 Dragon capsule equipped with a reduced crew of two people and two empty seats launched to the space station with the intention of bringing Wilmore and Williams back on board in February 2025.
However, NASA said in a press release Tuesday that replacements for Wilmore and Williams, traveling aboard the SpaceX Crew-10, would be launched to the space station “no earlier than the end of March 2025,” meaning it would be as soon as possible for Wilmore and Williams. will return to Earth.
The most recent delay in the Crew-10 launch is to give “NASA and SpaceX teams time to complete processing of a new Dragon spacecraft for the mission.”
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The Crew-9 – carrying Williams, Wilmore, fellow NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov – can only leave the space station after a “handover period” with the Crew-10.
The handover period “allows Crew-9 to share any lessons learned with the newly arrived crew and support a better transition for ongoing science and maintenance at the complex.”
NASA has not speculated on how long this transfer will take.
The Starliner, Boeing’s answer to the Crew Dragon, has faced major headwinds since its development began, including a series of technical problems and budget shortfalls.
It eventually took off, but after arriving at the space station with its crew, multiple helium leaks were discovered in the Starliner’s propulsion system, as well as degraded thrust in five of its maneuvering aircraft.
A return in late March or April would mean a trip that was expected to last just over a week for Williams and Wilmore would have been extended to at least nine months.
“The manufacturing, assembly, testing and final integration of a new spacecraft is painstaking work that requires great attention to detail,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, said Tuesday , in a press release about the Crew-10. “We appreciate the hard work of the SpaceX team to expand the Dragon fleet in support of our missions and the flexibility of the station program and expedition teams as we work together to complete the flight readiness of the new capsule.”
