Stranded Wilmore and Williams poised to return to Earth
13/3/2025 6:01
NASA is set to launch a SpaceX
rocket from Florida on Wednesday carrying a replacement crew for
the International Space Station in a mission that sets up the
return to Earth of U.S. astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni
Williams - stuck in space for nine months after a trip on
Boeing's faulty Starliner.
The U.S. space agency moved up the mission by two weeks after
President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX,
called for Wilmore and Williams to be brought back earlier than
NASA had planned.
A planned eight-day stay on the orbiting station has dragged
on for Wilmore and Williams, a pair of veteran astronauts and
U.S. Navy test pilots. Starliner returned to Earth without them
last year.
SpaceX's rocket is scheduled to blast off from the Kennedy
Space Center in Cape Canaveral at 7:48 p.m. ET (2348 GMT) with a
crew of two U.S. astronauts and one astronaut each from Japan
and Russia.
Wilmore and Williams have been working on research and
maintenance with the space station's other astronauts and have
remained safe, according to NASA. Williams told reporters in a
March 4 call that she is looking forward to seeing her family
and pet dogs upon returning home.
"It's been a roller coaster for them, probably a little bit
more so than for us," Williams said of her family. "We're here,
we have a mission - we're just doing what we do every day, and
every day is interesting because we're up in space and it's a
lot of fun."
The flight, known as Crew-10, normally would be considered a
routine astronaut rotation. Instead, it has become entangled in
politics as Trump and Musk have sought - without offering
evidence - to blame former President Joe Biden for the delayed
return of Wilmore and Williams.
The demands by Trump and Musk for an earlier return were an
unusual intervention in NASA's human spaceflight operations. The
mission previously had a target date of March 26, but NASA
swapped a delayed SpaceX capsule with a different one that would
be ready sooner.
When the new crew arrives aboard the station, Wilmore and
Williams and two others - NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian
cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov - can return to Earth in a capsule
that has been attached to the station since September, as part
of the prior Crew-9 mission.
Wilmore and Williams could not leave until the new Crew-10
craft arrives in order to keep the ISS staffed with enough U.S.
astronauts for maintenance, according to NASA. The departure
from the station is expected on Sunday, with a return to Earth
later that day or Monday.
Wilmore and Williams flew to the station in June as the
first test crew of Boeing's Starliner, which suffered propulsion
system issues in space. NASA deemed it too risky for the
astronauts to fly home on the Boeing craft. This led to the
current plan to bring them home in a SpaceX capsule.
Boeing built Starliner under a $4.5 billion contract with
NASA to compete with SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule, which since
2020 has been the U.S. space agency's only vehicle for sending
ISS crew members to orbit from American soil. Last year's
mission had marked Starliner's first test flight with astronauts
aboard, a requirement before NASA could certify the capsule for
routine astronaut missions.
Starliner's development has been plagued with engineering
issues and cost overruns since 2019, putting it far behind
SpaceX's Crew Dragon, which was developed under a similar NASA
contract worth at least $4 billion.
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