CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s two stuck astronauts may end up back on Earth a little sooner than planned.
The space agency announced Tuesday that SpaceX will switch capsules for upcoming astronaut flights in order to bring Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams home in mid-March instead of late March or April. That will shave at least a couple weeks off their prolonged stay at the International Space Station, which hit the eight-month mark last week.
“Human spaceflight is full of unexpected challenges,” NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich said in a statement.
The test pilots should have returned in June on Boeing’s Starliner capsule after what should have been a weeklong flight demo. But the capsule had so much trouble getting to the space station that NASA decided to bring it back empty and reassigned the pair to SpaceX.
Then SpaceX delayed the launch of their replacements on a brand new capsule that needed more prepping, which added more time to Wilmore and Williams’ mission.