NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams—the commander and pilot of the inaugural crew flight test (CFT) for Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft—have spent nine months on the International Space Station (ISS), their planned eight-day sojourn extended after engineers uncovered a litany of issues with Starliner. But they could return to Earth this month.
NASA on Wednesday is scheduled to launch the SpaceX Crew-10 mission, its 10th ISS commercial crew rotation mission using SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule. Once that spacecraft and its crew arrive, Wilmore and Williams will be relieved of their orbital duties and hitch a ride on a second SpaceX Dragon that has been docked to the ISS since September. According to NASA, that vehicle could return the astronauts at any time. But the space agency elected to keep them there for safety and cost reasons.
