Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who performed a spacewalk just last week, have been on the International Space Station for ten months, and are preparing to return a few days early. On the orders of the new American president Donald Trump, the two crewmates left aboard the ISS following the abandonment of their Starliner capsule, produced by Boeing, were to return next month, but a slight delay in the production of the capsule signed SpaceX forced the space agency to request a special shuttle, the one that was to be assigned to a future space tourism mission called Fram2, with Axiom.
SpaceX, constrained by the situation, nevertheless reasoned in tandem with Donald Trump, since the company's boss, Elon Musk, had given his agreement to the new president's request, and acquiesced in his criticisms according to which the extension of the two astronauts' time on the ISS was the fault of former president Joe Biden, who was in no way involved in the situation. "Musk, publicly accepting Trump's claim, also blamed Biden despite his space company's work with NASA to solve a spaceflight dilemma widely believed to be caused by Boeing," Reuters reports.
Crew-10 launches on March 12
SpaceX's capsule will not be sent empty, as it will carry new astronauts, for the Crew-10 mission. Initially, it was scheduled for March 25, but has now been brought forward to March 12, NASA announced on Tuesday, February 11. It is not known exactly when Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will leave, but the end of their stay should be signed immediately upon the arrival of the new crew. This capsule, named Endeavor, has already been used on three missions, and the American space agency must still carry out a readiness assessment before giving the green light for the launch next month.
“Human spaceflight is full of unexpected challenges,” said Steve Stich, director of NASA’s commercial crew program, in a statement, congratulating SpaceX for its flexibility. At the same time, entrepreneur Chun Wang and future commander of the Fram2 mission declared on X: “We will not see the South Pole in broad daylight.” A post with a sad emoji, since deleted, that referred to the observations that the man planned to make in polar orbit, for scientific research with astronauts from Poland, Hungary and India. Their mission will use another Crew Dragon capsule in the coming weeks or months.
Source: Reuters
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