Sunita Williams And Butch Wilmore’s Return Delayed As NASA-SpaceX Postpone Mission To Bring Back Stranded Astronauts | X/SpaceX
Florida: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and SpaceX on Monday postponed the launch of the Crew-10 Mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Notably, as part of the mission, a crew of four astronauts on board the Falcon 9 rocket would have replaced the stranded NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore.
The mission was postponed due to a “hydraulic system issue with a ground support clamp arm for the Falcon 9 rocket at Launch Complex 39A” at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.US. As per the NASA statement, opportunity is no earlier than 7:26 pm EDT on Thursday.
Tweet By SpaceX:
Launch coverage will start at 3:25 pm (local time) on NASA+. and docking is targeted at 11:30 pm (local time) on Friday. A crew of four will head to the ISS onboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for a six-month stay.
“With a March 13 Crew-10 launch, the Crew-9 mission with NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, would depart the space station no earlier than 9:05 a.m. Monday, March 17, pending weather at the splashdown locations off the coast of Florida,” NASA said in a statement.
Moments Before The Launch Was Postponed:
“Crew-10 is the 10th crew rotation mission of SpaceX’s human space transportation system and its 11th flight with crew aboard, including the Demo-2 test flight, to the space station through NASA’s Commercial Crew Program,” it added.
Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams have been stranded on the ISS for nine months after reaching there in June last year. They were supposed to stay there for about a week.
The astronauts were transported from Earth to the ISS aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft However, the spacecraft came back to Earth unmanned in September. As per a Fox News report, Starliner had faced “helium leaks” and “issues with the spacecraft reaction control thrusters” while docking with the ISS.
The launch was scheduled for Wednesday after US President Donald Trump urged SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to rescue the stranded astronauts sooner than NASA had planned. He has repeatedly accused former US President Joe Biden of abandoning them in space.
On March 7, Trump said that he had authorised Elon Musk to bring back American astronauts- Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore who have been stranded at the International Space Station since June last year.
