NEW DELHI, Dec 18: The return of astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore’s to Earth will be further delayed until at least late March 2025, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced on Wednesday.
The agency said Williams and Wilmore would return to Earth along with astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksander Gorbunov after the four-member Crew-10 mission reached the International Space Station (ISS).
The mission is expected to take off in late March 2025. It was originally slated to launch in February. The agency said the launch was delayed to give teams time to complete processing on a new Dragon spacecraft.
“Known as a handover period, it 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 said in a statement. However, NASA did not mention a specific date for the astronauts’ return.
Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore travelled to the ISS in June this year for a scheduled eight-day mission. A short stay turned out to be a months-long ordeal when the Boeing Starliner capsule they arrived on was deemed unfit to return them to Earth.
The two astronauts remain safe aboard the ISS, also called a permanent ‘home’ in space for scientists deployed for technical research missions. The ISS is periodically well-stocked and efficiently supplied.
SpaceX is not the only spaceship docked at the ISS. SpaceX Dragon Endeavour (Crew-8 mission), the Northrop Grumman resupply ship, the Soyuz MS-25 crew ship, the Progress 88 and 89 resupply ships, and the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft are also currently docked together with the ISS.
Williams and Wilmore are also not stuck alone inside the ISS. Other fellow astronauts include Oleg Kononenko (Commander), Nikolai Chub, Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick, Jeanette Epps, and Alexander Grebenkin.
The crew capsules can also function as ‘lifeboats’ when the astronauts need to abandon the ISS in case of an emergency or threat to safety. Boeing’s Starliner also acted as a ‘lifeboat’ for Williams and Wilmore before it was hit by thruster failures and helium gas leaks, leaving those two stranded inside ISS.
(Manas Dasgupta)