Will Sunita Williams spend more time in space? 7 months on, NASA astronaut will return only after…
NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore were scheduled to return to Earth in February this year — after the launch of the SpaceX Crew 10 mission. Williams and Wilmore had blasted off into space on June 5, 2024, on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. But NASA decided to ditch the faulty Starliner and bring two astronauts back to Earth with Crew 9 members on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
However, NASA’s SpaceX Crew 9 cannot return unless Crew 10 — its replacement — is launched into space.
Crew 10 was supposed to launch in February 2025. After the delay, the Crew 10 is now expected to take off in late March 2025, with four crew members — NASA astronauts Anne McClain (commander) and Nichole Ayers (pilot), JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi (mission specialist) and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.
“NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 now is targeting no earlier than late March 2025 to launch four crew members to the International Space Station,” NASA said in a press release on December 17, 2024.
This has pushed back the arrival of Crew-9 mission, which Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore are part of.
“The agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission with NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Sunita Williams, Butch Wilmore, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will return to Earth following the arrival of Crew-10 to the orbital laboratory,” NASA said.
The four Crew 9 members — Nick Hague and Aleksandr Grubonov, Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore — will now return following a short handover with Crew-10. The Crew 9 had launched into space September 29.
Do we know the exact date of Sunita William’s return?
No. NASA has not yet announced the exact date of Sunita William and Butch Wilmore’s return to Earth. However, it is expected that the two Starliner astronauts, “stuck” in space, won’t return until the end of March or even April because of a delay in launching their replacements.
The two test pilots, Sunita William and Butch Wilmore, planned on being away just a week or so when they blasted off June 5 on Boeing’s first astronaut flight to the International Space Station. Their mission grew from eight days to eight months after NASA decided to send the company’s problem-plagued Starliner capsule back empty in September.
‘Want to go home’
In a conversation with NASA officials earlier in January, Sunita Williams said, “It doesn’t feel like we’re cast away. Eventually, we want to go home because we left our families a little while ago, but we have a lot to do while we’re up here.
Meanwhile, Butch Wilmore said during the video call with ground control, “It doesn’t feel like we’re cast away. Eventually, we want to go home because we left our families a little while ago, but we have a lot to do while we’re up here.”
Why did NASA delay Crew 10 launch?
NASA said SpaceX needs more time to prepare the brand new capsule for liftoff. The US space agency said it considered using a different SpaceX capsule to fly up the replacement crew in order to keep the flights on schedule.
But it decided the best option was to wait for the new capsule to transport the next crew. NASA said the team determined that launching Crew-10 in late March, following completion of the new Dragon spacecraft, “was the best option for meeting NASA’s requirements and achieving space station objectives for 2025.”
NASA prefers to have overlapping crews at the space station for a smoother transition, according to officials. Most space station missions last six months, with a few reaching a full year.
“Several people have supported longer missions, extending to about a year, to help the agency learn more about how humans adapt to spaceflight to prepare for missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond,” NASA said.
