by The two NASA astronauts who have been stuck on the International Space Station since problems with their Boeing spacecraft in June will have to stay there longer, the agency said Tuesday.
NASA has postponed the launch of the next crew of astronauts to the ISS from February to the end of March at the earliest to allow more time to “finish” a new SpaceX spacecraft to be used for the mission.
Four crew members aboard the station must wait for the next crew to arrive before they can depart on a separate SpaceX Dragon capsule. They include NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who launched the challenging first test flight of the Boeing Starliner vehicle.
The two originally planned to spend about a week on the space station, but in the end they will have lived and worked in orbit for more than nine months, including the extra time for the recent delay.
New crews typically overlap with departing crews on the ISS for a short period of time, in the so-called handover period, during which astronauts can exchange information about ongoing science experiments, maintenance projects and other protocols.
When Williams and Wilmore finally depart after this handover, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will fly home with them.
Astronaut Suni Williams in space on the ISS, December 2, 2024.
Officials said the new Dragon capsule, scheduled for launch in late March, is expected to arrive at NASA’s processing facility in Florida in early January.
“The fabrication, assembly, testing and final integration of a new spacecraft is a laborious undertaking that requires great attention to detail,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said in a statement.
When the capsule launches – a mission called Crew-10 – it is expected to carry NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov and Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi. Until then, the four will continue training for their mission at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, NASA said.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
