NASA astronauts face new delay as SpaceX rocket launch is postponed

The mission to rescue NASA’s stranded astronauts has been delayed yet again, marking another setback in the nine-month-long saga. 

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.

The task involved transporting four astronauts to relieve Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who have been marooned on the International Space Station (ISS) since June.

All four astronauts were fully prepared and secured in their seats when the mission was canceled less than 30 minutes before the scheduled launch.

It’s a disappointing outcome for NASA and SpaceX, and undoubtedly the two astronauts stranded in space. 

NASA and SpaceX will meet again on Thursday evening to make a second launch attempt. SpaceX officials mentioned that if the backup launch on Friday also faces issues, there will be another opportunity to launch.

This would have let Williams and Wilmore flee the ISS two days later and be back on Earth with the families by Sunday. 

The delay comes as Elon Musk said he offered to bring the pair home eight months ago, but the Biden Administration shot it down because it would’ve made Donald Trump ‘look good’ in the presidential race against Kamala.

The next rescue mission has been rescheduled for March 13 at the earliest, which means Williams and Wilmore will not return to Earth until at least Monday. 

At 6.55pm, just 50 minutes before takeoff and moments before the launch was scrubbed, SpaceX shared behind the scenes photos of the astronauts on X, captioned: ‘Crew-10 is go for launch!’

But something went wrong with the clamp arm in an incident commentators described as a ‘hydraulic ground issue’ moments later, sparking an immediate halt on the mission.

The crew were taken from the rocket one at a time and led to several waiting Teslas, which are specially designed for the astronauts. They were driven to a quarantine location in Florida, where they must remain until the next launch attempt. 

‘We will not launch unless we know we can do so safely and reliably,’ a SpaceX commentator said in the livestream of the event. 

The four-person crew included Japan’s Takuya Onishi, Russia’s Kirill Peskov, and NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers.

‘We are going to take a little bit of an adventure,’ McClain, who is a US Army colonel and OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter pilot, told Florida Today

‘We’re ready to high-five them, bring them home.’

Williams and Wilmore were originally 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.

The plan is for them to return inside SpaceX’s Crew-9 Dragon capsule that is already docked to the ISS.  Williams and Wilmore will be accompanied by NASA’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Aleksandr Gorbunov when they undock.

During a recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience, Musk explained that the Biden administration did not want to jeopardize Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign and intentionally ‘pushed the return date past the inauguration date.’

Musk donated $288 million to Trump’s campaign and appeared at several MAGA rallies. 

The SpaceX CEO also noted that the Biden administration was suing SpaceX at the time.

NASA officials have not directly addressed these claims. 

But during a Friday press briefing, Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of the agency’s Space Operation Mission Directorate, said SpaceX has been working with NASA to develop a backup return plan for the Starliner mission since last July.

‘The SpaceX folks helped us with a lot of options for how we would bring Butch and Suni home on Dragon in a contingency,’ Bowersox said.

He also 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.

Williams and Wilmore are expected to depart about two days after the Crew-10 mission arrives. 

Typically, a departing ISS crew shares the space station with the incoming crew for about five days in what’s known as a ‘handover period.’ 

This allows them to get the new crew up to speed on space station operations and ensures a smooth transition between teams.

But this time, NASA decided to shorten the handover period to just two days to conserve food on the ISS and open up more undocking opportunities for the Starliner crew in case the weather interferes with their targeted  return date.

When Williams and Wilmore launched aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on June 5, they were only supposed to spend eight days on the ISS. 

But a series of technical issues with their ship, including thruster failures and helium leaks, ultimately drove NASA to send the faulty spacecraft home without its crew in September. 

Bowersox said that NASA and SpaceX 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.’