NASA astronauts Butch and Suni face new delay in returning home

NASA says astronauts stuck on the International Space Station will have to wait even longer to return home.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were due to return after just one week when they took off in June.

His stay was extended until February next year due to technical problems with the experimental Starliner spacecraft, built by Boeing.

Now, after a delay in the launch of a new capsule to the ISS, the pair will not return until the end of March or possibly April.

NASA said the delay posed no risk to astronauts.

In a statement, NASA stated: “The International Space Station recently hosted two resupply flights in November and is well equipped with everything the crew needs, including food, water, clothing and oxygen. The resupply spacecraft also carried items special for the crew to celebrate the holidays aboard the orbital platform.”

Most missions to space stations last six months, and some last a full year. Therefore, extending Butch and Suni’s long-awaited stay in space should not be a problem, according to Dr. Simeon Barber of the Open University.

“I’m sure they’re already disappointed that they were going to miss Christmas at home with their people. But this is just another two months on a mission that’s already long enough, and I’m sure if you ask them, they’ll probably tell you.” “They would say the space station is the place they love to be,” he said.

A new crew needs to launch before Wilmore and Williams can return and the next mission has been delayed by more than a month, according to the space agency.

NASA’s next four-person crew for the ISS was supposed to launch in February 2025. The capsule carrying that crew was supposed to be the one that would bring Butch and Sunni home, as well as NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov as part of the normal crew rotation.

But private sector company SpaceX has delayed preparing a new Dragon capsule for the mission. It is now planned to be ready to fly no earlier than the end of March.

NASA said it considered using a different SpaceX capsule to carry the replacement crew and keep flights on schedule.

But now he has decided that the best option is to wait for the new capsule to transport the next crew.