NASA scheduling move poised to bring Starliner astronauts home days sooner

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams walk at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, ahead of Boeing’s Starliner-1 crewed flight test, Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, June 5, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

NASA on Tuesday swapped out the astronaut capsule it plans to use for an upcoming routine flight to the International Space Station, a scheduling move that will allow a slightly earlier return for two Starliner astronauts who have been on the station far longer than expected.

The US space agency said mission management teams opted to use a previously flown SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule for its Crew-10 mission to the space station, instead of a new SpaceX capsule whose production it said has been delayed.

The decision moves up the Crew-10 launch to March 12, from the previous target of March 25. NASA said it would still need to do a flight readiness assessment of the previously flown Crew Dragon capsule, which is named Endeavor and has been used on three previous missions.

The return of two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who flew to the International Space Station on Boeing’s faulty Starliner capsule last summer, has hinged on the arrival of the Crew-10’s four-person crew in order to keep the station’s American contingent staffed at normal levels.

The decision follows President Donald Trump’s abrupt demand to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk last month to bring Wilmore and Williams back to Earth “as soon as possible,” pleading for an end to their mission that in large part had already been decided on last year.

After Trump’s demand, NASA affirmed its plan to bring home the astronauts, saying it would do so “as soon as practical.” In its statement on Tuesday, the agency did not say its decision to change the Crew-10 capsule was made to bring the Starliner crew home early.

“Human spaceflight is full of unexpected challenges,” NASA’s Commercial Crew Program head Steve Stich said in a statement, praising SpaceX for its flexibility.

Trump’s call was an unusual intervention by a president into NASA’s meticulously arranged ISS schedule and foisted Wilmore and Williams into an unlikely political spotlight.

Trump had blamed his predecessor Joe Biden for the astronaut’s situation, though Biden had no involvement in the program. Musk, publicly accepting Trump’s demand, also blamed Biden despite his space company’s work with NASA to solve a spaceflight dilemma widely acknowledged to be caused by Boeing.

The spacecraft swap affects SpaceX’s planned Fram2 private astronaut mission, which was expected to use the Endeavor capsule sometime this year for a polar-orbiting mission.

“We’ve lost the South Pole in the daylight,” the mission’s commander, Maltese crypto entrepreneur Chun Wang, wrote on X with a sad face emoji, replying to rumors about the Crew-10 decision. The mission will use a different Crew Dragon in SpaceX’s fleet.

The Crew-10 decision is also expected to impact Axiom’s planned Crew Dragon mission where it will fly government astronauts from India, Poland, and Hungary. Houston-based Axiom, which arranges private and government astronaut missions using Crew Dragon, did not immediately return a request for comment.

SpaceX developed its Crew Dragon capsule with roughly $3 billion in funding from NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which aims to entrust companies with spaceflight with the hopes of stimulating a private market and bringing costs down.

Boeing’s Starliner, which flew back to Earth in September without Wilmore and Williams, has been developed under the same NASA program, but has struggled with engineering flaws.