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A yoke of astronauts wholaunched aboard Boeing ’s Starlinerspacecraft in June for a 10 - daytime trip to theInternational Space Station(ISS ) will now spend at least nine month in blank space , afterNASAannounced yet another delay to their return flight of steps .
NASA saidin a blog post Tuesday(Dec . 17 ) that the next bunch swap to the ISS will happen no to begin with than late March 2025 . The Crew-10 commission will set in motion four bunch member to the space station . It was originally schedule for February , but NASA andSpaceXhave delay the launch in decree to complete a fresh Dragon ballistic capsule for the delegation . The Dragon spacecraft is the individual spacefaring company ’s crewed vehicle that can carry up to seven astronauts at a time into downcast - earth field .
NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore conducting a space walk outside the ISS in 2015. Wilmore and fellow astronaut Sunita Williams just had their current stay aboard the space station extended by at least another month.
" Fabrication , forum , examination , and final integrating of a new spacecraft is a painstaking effort that requires peachy attention to detail,“Steve Stich , the manager of NASA ’s Commercial Crew Program , allege in the web log post .
The delay , however , means an extra calendar month in distance for NASA ’s Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams — the two astronaut who flew to the post aboard Boeing ’s Starliner crew - delivery vehicle earlier this year . The mission was expected to last a fiddling more than a calendar week , but the craftiness experiencedissues with its thrusterson its glide path to the ISS . This lead to a three - month wait in the spacecraft ’s return as NASA stress to estimate out the trouble . Ultimately , the agency sent the ballistic capsule back to Earth without its gang . It landed in Septemberwithout incident .
Related : NASA warns of potential ' catastrophic unsuccessful person ' on leak out ISS — but Russia does n’t desire to fix it
Record stays in space
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— ISS dodges its thirty-ninth piece of potentially hazardous space junk . expert say it wo n’t be the last
Wilmore and Williams have inadvertently become long - full term resident of the ISS , though their trip isnot imperil any records . For example , astronaut Scott Kelly stayed aboard the ISS for 340 days between 2015 and 2016 as part of a matching study — his spaceman twin brother Mark stayed on Earth so researchers could compare the two and learn about theimpacts of space on wellness and physiology . In 2023 , astronaut Frank Rubiospent a yr straight in orbit , the first American to do so . ( Rubio ’s length of stay was also unwitting , as his Soyuz ballistic capsule spring a leak . ) Six other people have drop more than a yr in space .
The Crew-10 delegacy will carry NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers , Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi , and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov to the ISS . After a handover point , Williams and Wilmore , along with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos spaceman Aleksandr Gorbunov will turn back to Earth . The ISS was resupplied in November , according to NASA , including " special items " for the astronauts to celebrate the holidays in place .
