Sunita Williams’ Return To Earth Further Delayed: NASA

Mumbai: Astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore’s return to Earth will be further delayed, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced on Wednesday.

Originally expected to be launched in February, the mission to bring back the astronauts will now be launched will now take off take off in late March 2025.

According to NASA’s latest update, Williams and Willmore will return to Earth along with astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov after the four-member Crew-10 mission reaches the space station.

The launch will be delayed to give teams time to complete processing on a new Dragon spacecraft.

“Known as a handover period, it allows Crew-9 to share any lessons learned with the newly arrived crew and support a better transition for ongoing science and maintenance at the complex,” NASA said in a statement on Tuesday, without mentioning a specific date for the astronauts’ return.

Williams and Wilmore travelled to the International Space Station (ISS) in June for an eight-day mission. However, the short stay has turned out to be a six-month ordeal already, and counting, after the Boeing Starliner capsule they travelled in was deemed unfit to return them to Earth.

There is no concern about their safety aboard the ISS, which is periodically well-stocked and efficiently supplied.

SpaceX is not the only spaceship docked at the ISS. SpaceX Dragon Endeavour (Crew-8 mission), the Northrop Grumman resupply ship, the Soyuz MS-25 crew ship, the Progress 88 and 89 resupply ships, and the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft are also docked together with the ISS.

Besides Williams and Willmore, fellow astronauts Oleg Kononenko (Commander), Nikolai Chub, Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick, Jeanette Epps and Alexander Grebenkin are also stuck inside the ISS.