NASA demands SpaceX change its spacecraft to speed up return of astronauts marooned in space

SpaceX has failed in its bid to have a new Dragon capsule ready in time for its planned Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) to replace Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, the American astronauts who have been there since June 2024. The flight was scheduled for February and, after granting an extension of several weeks, NASA has now decided not to wait any longer and is demanding Elon Musk’s space company use a ship that has already successfully carried out other space missions. Williams and Wilmore will thus be able to return to Earth from mid-March.

The replacement astronauts will arrive on board the Endurance spacecraft, which has previously carried three full crews to the ISS as part of SpaceX’s regular space transportation service for the U.S. space agency. With the change just announced by NASA, the earliest possible date for Crew-10 to take off will be March 12.

The four members of the mission — Americans Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japanese Takuya Onishi and Russian Kirill Peskov — will arrive at the ISS within hours of takeoff. It will take a few days for them to complete the transfer of tasks and responsibilities from Williams — current commander of the ISS — Wilmore, and their two fellow Crew-9 crew members, American Nick Hague and Russian Alexander Gorbunov. The latter two arrived at the ISS at the end of September in another SpaceX Dragon, with two empty seats for the astronauts trapped in space to return on that ship with them. If there are no unforeseen events, the four astronauts will begin their return to Earth between mid and late March, once the transfer of powers between the two crews is complete.

Williams and Wilmore reached the ISS on June 6, 2024 aboard a Starliner spacecraft, making its first space flight. The first manned mission of the Boeing space capsule was only a test flight, with an eight-day stay planned on the space station. However, the failures observed on the outbound flight led NASA to put its return on hold until, towards the end of the summer, the agency decided that the ship would return alone — it did so without experiencing any issues — and that Wilmore and Williams would be integrated into the regular rotation of crew members on the station. Approximately every six months, there is a change of crew.

It was then decided that Williams and Wilmore would return in February, at the end of the scheduled stay of their companions Hague and Gorbunov. The two trapped astronauts have thus had the opportunity to spend another long period on the ISS, something they had not planned on as they are veteran astronauts who had already been there several times. In addition to routine maintenance tasks and scientific research, they have exited the ISS to carry out various tasks. On January 30, Williams became the woman who has spent the most time in space outside of a spacecraft, surpassing 62 hours of spacewalks.

SpaceX delay

The return plan drawn up by NASA gave priority to maximizing the safety of the two astronauts over bringing them back to Earth as quickly as possible. Even so, since the end of September, they have had the SpaceX ship of the Crew-9 at their disposal to return in case of personal need or an emergency on board.

The problem has been the delay in the arrival of the replacement crew. In December 2024, the space agency gave SpaceX extra time to finish manufacturing and testing a completely new Dragon capsule, which it wanted to use on Crew-10. Musk’s company would then have until the end of March to launch that mission. However, in recent weeks, rumors began to spread in the space community that the new capsule would not be ready in March either.

Amid this uncertainty, Musk made a surprising announcement at the end of January that Trump had tasked him with rescuing the astronauts as soon as possible, whom he claimed the Biden administration had abandoned on the ISS. The reality is that its own technical problems have forced SpaceX to shelve its new Dragon C-213 capsule: in principle, it is reserved for the private Axiom-4 mission that was to be carried out by the ship that will replace it, the Endurance, which has already proven its reliability in previous space flights and should be ready in less time.

The change could allow Musk to shave a couple of weeks off the delay in bringing Williams and Wilmore back, but it is now official that he will not be able to fulfill NASA’s request to return them to Earth in February.

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