NASA’s stranded astronauts fiasco has taken yet another twist.
The mission that would have let Sunita WIlliams and Butch Wilmore leave space was supposed to take off last night but was canceled due to technical issues with the rocket.
Now, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been forced to abandon the next launch window as strong winds threaten Florida Thursday.
If all goes to plan, the next launch will kick off on Friday at 7:03pm ET and the astronauts return home on March 19.
Williams and Wilmore were scheduled for an eight-day stay on the International Space Station (ISS) when they arrived in June.
However, the Boeing capsule that took them to space malfunctioned, and they have been stuck there for more than nine months.
The delays come as Elon Musk said he offered to bring the pair home eight months ago.
He claimed the Biden Administration shot it down because it would’ve made Donald Trump ‘look good’ in the presidential race against Kamala.
Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams were original scheduled for an eight-day mission, but were forced to stay after technical issues plagued the Boeing’s Starliner that brought them to the ISS
Musk backed Trump during the 2024 presidential race, donating $288 million to his campaign and appearing at several MAGA rallies
During a Friday press briefing, Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of the NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, admitted that there ‘may have been conversations’ in the White House about delaying the return for political reasons, but he was not part of the discussions.
The crew replacing Williams and Wilmore includes Japan’s Takuya Onishi, Russia’s Kirill Peskov, and NASA ‘s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers.
Wednesday’s launch was called off due to a hydraulic system issue with the Falcon 9 rocket. NASA said teams are working to address the problem.
This mission would have brought Williams and Wilmore home Sunday.
NASA had moved up the return mission by two weeks after after Trump told Musk to ‘go get’ Williams and Wilmore, saying Biden had ‘abandoned’ them in space.
Before the president’s request, the astronauts were not coming back earlier than March 26.
‘It’s been a roller coaster for them, probably a little bit more so than for us,’ Williams said of her family.
‘We’re here, we have a mission – we’re just doing what we do every day, and every day is interesting because we’re up in space and it’s a lot of fun.’
When the new crew, dubbed Crew-10, arrives aboard the station, Wilmore, Williams and two others – NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov – can return to Earth in a capsule that has been attached to the station since September.
Wilmore and Williams flew to the ISS as the first test crew of Boeing’s Starliner, which suffered propulsion system issues in space.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket was supposed to launch from Kennedy Space Center at 7:48pm ET Wednesday, but the mission was scrubbed at the 11th hour. Thursday was a backup date for the next launch, but it was also canceled
The crew replacing Williams and Wilmore includes Japan’s Takuya Onishi (right), Russia’s Kirill Peskov (left), and NASA ‘s Anne McClain (second left) and Nichole Ayers (second right)
NASA deemed it too risky for the astronauts to fly home on the Boeing craft. This led to the current plan to bring them home in a SpaceX capsule that arrived in September.
The space agency gave Boeing $4.5 billion contract to develop Starliner in a bid to compete with Musk’s SpaceX.
Bowersox said Friday that SpaceX ‘helped with a lot of options’ for bringing Williams and Wilmore back earlier, but the final decision came down to costs.
He explained that they discussed adding a mission or bringing the currently docked capsule home early, ‘but we ruled them out pretty quickly just based on how much money we’ve got in our budget.’
NASA’s budget for the fiscal year 2024 was around $30 billion.
It comes after a report found the agency spent millions on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) grants and contracts while Williams and Wilmore have been stuck in space.
Bill Gerstenmaier, vice president for SpaceX, also said Friday that NASA’s delayed plan allowed the agency ‘to use Sunny and Butch in a very productive manner’ and ‘keep the science going.
Returning the astronauts early would’ve meant fewer bodies on the International Space Station (ISS) to continue research.
