NASA has announced it may bring home Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the astronauts who launched on Boeing Starliner’s first crewed test flight in June, a couple of weeks before their previously scheduled return date.
The space agency made the decision after swapping the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule it will use for its Crew-10 mission. The new launch date is set for March 12 and could potentially put Williams and Wilmore’s return days ahead of schedule.
The astronauts must arrive at the International Space Station before Williams and Wilmore, who are currently assigned to the Crew-9 mission, can complete their rotation on the space station and head back to Earth. The Crew-10 mission will include NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.
Earlier this month, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump sparked confusion about the Starliner astronauts’ situation, claiming that they would be returned using a SpaceX capsule. However, NASA officials had previously announced plans to use a SpaceX vehicle for their return.
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/11/science/nasa-boeing-astronauts-spacex/index.html