NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore continue to be stranded on ISS as SpaceX postponed its latest Crew-10 mission to bring them home citing an issue with the hydraulic system on the launch side. It said they face problems with the launch tower, not the spacecraft.
SpaceX has now scheduled a launch on Friday at 7.30 p.m. E.T. The much-talked-about Crew-10 mission will bring NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Sunita Williams, and Butch Wilmore, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov back to Earth.
This is the 10th crew rotation mission of SpaceX’s human space transportation system. Moreover, this is SpaceX’s 11th flight with crew aboard, including the Demo-2 test flight to the space station through NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
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Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore In Space Since June 2024
With the latest delay, Sunita Williams, 59, and her counterpart Butch Wilmore will have to spend two more days in space. They were launched to the space station on June 5 in a Boeing Starliner spacecraft. It should be noted that this capsule had never flown people before and the mission’s goal was to test how it performed over about eight days. But it didn’t go well.
The capsule’s thrusters failed to fire properly and the spacecraft suffered helium leaks. Boeing tried to solve the issues but NASA lost confidence in the aircraft maker to safely return its astronauts home. It then turned to SpaceX.
U.S. President Donald Trump blamed the previous administration for leaving two astronauts stranded in space. He said Biden left them up there. “We have two astronauts that are stuck in space and I have asked Elon to do me a favor, ‘Can you get ‘em out?’.”
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk had earlier claimed on social media that they could have brought Williams and Wilmore back several months ago and offered the same directly to the then-president Joe Biden, but the administration refused.
