NASA Astronauts Stuck on ISS until February

NASA has decided to return the Starliner spacecraft to Earth without astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. They will remain on the International Space Station until February 2025.

This is stated in an official NASA announcement.

Wilmore and Williams will remain on the ISS due to a malfunction of the Boeing Starliner. In February 2024, the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule will deliver them to Earth.

‘Spaceflight is risky, even in the safest and most routine cases. A test flight is inherently neither safe nor routine. Our decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the space station and return the Starliner home without a crew is the result of our commitment to safety: our core value,’ explained NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft is expected to fly to the ISS in September as part of a rotation mission and eventually pick up astronauts. Two of the four seats on Crew Dragon will remain free for Wilmore and Williams.

As The Gaze previously reported, in June this year, the astronauts' test mission, which was originally supposed to last about eight days, was delayed due to problems with the Boeing Starliner's propulsion system. These technical problems have cast doubt on the spacecraft's ability to safely return the astronauts to Earth as planned.

American billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX is a direct competitor of Boeing in the field of spaceflight.