The two NASA astronauts "not stranded" on the International Space Station (ISS) are "not stranded" for another month. Due to a delay in the next crew rotation mission, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will remain on the station until late March.
The first crewed flight of Boeing's Starliner that launched on June 5, 2024 was supposed to be the company's comeback after a string of accidents, scandals, and financial free falls. Unfortunately, what began as an eight-day visit to the ISS has turned into a satirical version of those cheap flights to Ibiza that seem to take longer than the actual holiday.
Due to malfunctions in the spacecraft's thruster system, Starliner was determined to be unsafe to bring the astronauts back to Earth, so it ended up coming home empty while Wilmore and Williams remained behind. It was bad enough that Starliner was years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget that Boeing had to shell out, now the Starliner crew had to remain on the ISS a bit longer, with eight days becoming eight months.
Sorry, now nine months.
To be fair, the fault this time isn't Boeing's but SpaceX's. According to NASA, there have been delays in preparing the Dragon spacecraft for the next crew mission, with the capsule not scheduled to reach Cape Canaveral, Florida until early January.
When it lifts off in late March, it will carry NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov to the station. This will free up the previous Dragon now docked to the ISS to return to Earth with NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Williams, and Wilmore, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
"Fabrication, assembly, testing, and final integration of a new spacecraft is a painstaking endeavor that requires great attention to detail," said Steve Stich, manager, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. "We appreciate the hard work by the SpaceX team to expand the Dragon fleet in support of our missions and the flexibility of the station program and expedition crews as we work together to complete the new capsule’s readiness for flight."
Source: NASA
