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NASA Reveals New Plan to Return Stranded Astronauts to Earth
Sunita "Suni" Williams and Barry "Butch" Wilmore are inactive successful abstraction contempt the caller motorboat of a instrumentality capsule from the International Space Station.
Even though the astronauts person been astatine the ISS since June—when their Boeing Starliner experienced instrumentality failure, forcing NASA to extend their eight-day ngo indefinitely—they did not drawback a thrust backmost to Earth connected the agency's SpaceX Crew-8 craft, which successfully touched down Oct. 25.
That's due to the fact that the Crew-8 formation was already assigned to NASA's Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps as good arsenic Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, who had each been connected the ISS since March—approximately 3 months longer than Williams and Wilmore.
The four-person squad was portion of a regular unit rotation connected the ISS and had agelong been assigned to the Crew-8 flight. In fact, their ngo location had already been delayed respective times owed to bad upwind astir Florida, preventing the departure of the capsule.
Overall, they spent a full of 232 days aboard the abstraction station.
So, erstwhile volition Williams and Wilmore yet get backmost to Earth? As NASA antecedently announced, the 2 astronauts volition beryllium leaving the ISS connected the Crew-9 flight, which is scheduled to depart successful February.
"The determination to keep Butch and Suni connected committee the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner location uncrewed is the effect of a committedness to safety," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during an August property conference. "Our halfway worth is information and it is our North Star."
MIGUEL J. RODRIGUEZ CARRILLO/AFP via Getty Images
In September, Williams and Wilmore's Boeing Starliner—which they were initially expected to instrumentality location on—landed successful New Mexico without immoderate unit connected committee owed to information concerns.
"There was a batch of invaluable learning that volition alteration our semipermanent success," NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich said successful a connection astatine the time. "I privation to commend the full squad for their hard enactment and dedication implicit the past 3 months."
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