TWO astronauts stranded on the International Space Station are set to be stuck there for even longer after their escape has been delayed.
Americans Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore won’t be back on solid footing until late March at the earliest after NASA set back their fight home.
That means their eight-day trip to space will turn into a whopping nine months in zero gravity after first rocketing up to the heavens in June.
Two astronauts went to the ISS for a trial mission. However, they had to stay in space for an additional eight months because the Boeing Starliner capsule that took them there couldn’t bring them back.
NASA said Williams and Wilmore would now return with other astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
The foursome will venture home when the Crew-10 mission reaches the space station – but that is now not expected to take off in late March.
NASA explains that they needed more time to get ready to send four new crew members, known as Crew-10, to the International Space Station using SpaceX’s system for human space travel.
NASA mentioned that they and SpaceX looked into different possibilities for handling the next switch of crew members, such as using a different Dragon spacecraft and making changes to the schedule.
They said: “After careful consideration, the team determined that launching Crew-10 in late March, following completion of the new Dragon spacecraft, was the best option for meeting NASA’s requirements and achieving space station objectives for 2025.”
NASA said the delay was to give the teams time to complete processing on a new Dragon spacecraft for the mission.
Steve Stich, manager, NASA’s Commercial Crew, said: “Fabrication, assembly, testing, and final integration of a new spacecraft is a painstaking endeavour that requires great attention to detail.
“We appreciate the hard work by the SpaceX team to expand the Dragon fleet in support of our missions and the flexibility of the station program and expedition crews as we work together to complete the new capsule’s readiness for flight.”
The agency did not specify an exact date for the return of the astronauts.
The Crew-10 mission was originally slated to launch in February.
Hague and Gorbunov boarded the ISS in September, over three months after Williams and Wilmore.
