NASA is bumping up a return mission for Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, two US astronauts who have been at the International Space Station since June.
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NASA’s two stuck astronauts may end up back on Earth a little sooner than planned.
The space agency announced Tuesday that SpaceX will switch capsules for upcoming astronaut flights in order to bring Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams home in mid-March instead of late March or April.
Their prolonged stay at the International Space Station (ISS) hit the eight-month mark last week after what was supposed to be a week-long journey.
“Human spaceflight is full of unexpected challenges,” NASA’s commercial crew programme manager Steve Stich said in a statement.
The test pilots should have returned in June on Boeing’s Starliner capsule, but the capsule had so much trouble getting to the space station that NASA decided to bring it back empty and reassigned the pair to SpaceX.
SpaceX then delayed the launch of their replacements on a brand new capsule, which added more time to Wilmore and Williams’ mission.
NASA opted for its next crew to fly up on an older capsule, with liftoff now targeted for March 12.
NASA prefers having a new crew arrive before sending the old one back, in this case, Wilmore, Williams and two others up there since September.
The new crew going up includes two NASA astronauts, as well as one from Japan and one from Russia.
NASA’s latest change in plans comes two weeks after the space agency said it was working “expeditiously” to bring back Wilmore and Williams as soon as possible. Just a day earlier, President Donald Trump and SpaceX’s Elon Musk had vowed to accelerate the astronauts’ return.
