NASA announces crew members cut from SpaceX flight to free up seats for stranded Boeing Starliner astronauts

Source: The Independent

12 hours ago


A SpaceX Dragon capsule is set to launch next month with two empty seats to return the stranded Boeing Starliner astronauts to Earth early next year. NASA announced on Friday that two crew members would be cut from the SpaceX Crew-9 mission to make room - astronauts Zenda Cardman and Stephanie Wilson. It would have been Cardman’s first spaceflight.

The Dragon Capsule will launch from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Station to the International Space Station in late September. It will carry NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov to ISS where they will spend around five months in orbit. When they return in February 2025, they will be travelling with astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore.

Williams and Wilmore launched into space on Boeing’s Starliner on June 5 but had trouble docking because of issues with the craft’s thrusters, and helium leaks that delayed the process by nearly an hour. Since then, engineering teams have reviewed data, conducted flight and ground testing, consulted experts, and developed return contingency plans.

But it has meant that the Starliner astronauts’ ten-day mission aboard the first-ever crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner has now turned into an unexpected months-long odyssey.

Read more: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nasa-spacex-boeing-starliner-astronauts-b2604665.html