NASA, SpaceX Expedite Crew Rotation: Sunita Williams, Butch Wilmore to Return Sooner
New York: NASA and SpaceX are advancing the launch and return schedules for upcoming crew rotation missions to and from the International Space Station (ISS), expediting the return of astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore.
NASA announced on Tuesday that the Crew-10 launch is now targeting March 12, pending mission readiness and the completion of its flight certification process, as reported by Xinhua News Agency.
Following a brief handover period with the incoming Crew-10 team, the Crew-9 mission—which includes Williams, Wilmore, NASA astronaut Nick Hague, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov—will return to Earth.
Previously scheduled for late March, the Crew-10 mission will now transport NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov to the ISS.
The earlier launch opportunity became available after mission management decided to modify the original plan, which called for a new Dragon spacecraft for the Crew-10 mission. The new plan requires additional processing time, according to NASA.
The flight will now use the previously flown Dragon spacecraft named Endurance, with joint teams working to complete assessments of its previously used hardware to ensure it meets the Commercial Crew Programme’s safety and certification requirements.
This development follows a request from US President Donald Trump to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to expedite the return of Williams and Wilmore. Musk expressed that it was “terrible” that the two astronauts had been stranded at the ISS for such an extended period, even though NASA had already enlisted SpaceX months earlier to return them as part of the Crew-9 mission.
Williams and Wilmore have been stuck in space since June last year due to technical issues with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which initially transported them to the ISS.
