The return to Earth will have to wait for the two astronauts of the POTstranded on the International Space Station (ISS) since last June. They will not return to Earth until spring 2025after the delay of the Crew-10 launch, the space agency reported this Tuesday.
NASA astronauts Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore and Sunita ‘Suni’ Williams will have to extend their stay in the so-called orbital laboratory due to a delay in the launch of the spacecraft that will bring them back, NASA said in a statement.
The agency detailed that NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission and its four crew members will be sent “no earlier than the end of March 2025.”
After careful consideration, the NASA and SpaceX team determined that the “best option” was to launch Crew-10 in late March, once construction of the new Dragon spacecraft completedwhich would achieve the ISS objectives for 2025.
“Manufacturing, assembly, testing and final integration of a new spacecraft is a painstaking effort that requires great attention to detail,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said of the delay.
The mission tests the first Boeing flight
Wilmore and Williams took off on June 5 from Florida (USA) aboard the Starliner heading to the ISS as part of the Crew Flight Test (CFT) test mission, the first Boeing flight that was to last a little longer. of a week.
However, shortly before reaching the station helium leaks and failures in the thruster systems were detected which forced the duration of the mission to be extended.
The leadership of the US space agency finally determined that the ship return without a crew, and that Butch and Suni returned aboard the SpaceX Dragon capsule that was used in the Crew-9 mission last September.
The Starliner left the ISS without its two crew members and about six hours later it successfully landed at White Sands, which was the closing of an eventful mission whose objective is the certification of the capsule by NASA so that it can operate as a transport and cargo service.