The Starliner saga has been going on for almost five months now, but President-elect Donald Trump has decided to attempt a last-minute rescue operation. NASA will reportedly swap one SpaceX Dragon spacecraft for another to return the two Starliner astronauts a little earlier than expected, following Trump’s high-profile attempt to save the crew that doesn’t need rescuing.
NASA is reportedly working to return the two astronauts from the International Space Station (ISS) on March 19, about two weeks earlier than the agency’s current plan, an anonymous source told Ars Technica. This happened shortly after President Trump announced that he had asked SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk to “pick up the 2 brave astronauts that the Biden administration effectively abandoned in space,” he wrote on the Truth Social website. An attempt to speed up the return of the Starliner crew would not only require rearranging the spacecraft on the ground, but would undoubtedly delay the private mission to the ISS.
NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore launched to the ISS aboard a Boeing CST-100 Starliner on June 5, 2024. Initially, the mission was designed for eight days in space, but problems with the spacecraft’s engines forced NASA to return the empty Starliner back from the ISS, considering it unsafe to transport the crew to Earth. Instead, Williams and Wilmore will return aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft.
In September 2024, NASA launched the Crew-9 mission with two astronauts instead of four. The two available seats were reserved for Williams and Wilmore, who were supposed to return with the Crew-9 crew in February, but there was more trouble ahead. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 was originally scheduled to launch in February, but technical problems with the spacecraft delayed its launch and subsequent crew transfer. This means that Crew 9, along with Williams and Wilmore, will not be able to leave the ISS until Crew 10 is on the station, further delaying the return of the Starliner astronauts to early April.
NASA now believes that the Dragon capsule will not be ready for launch to the ISS by the end of April, so the agency has decided to swap spacecraft, Ars Technica reports. NASA has reportedly asked SpaceX to launch the Crew-10 mission aboard its Dragon C210 spacecraft no earlier than March 12. This particular SpaceX ship, called Endurance, returned to Earth in March 2024 after the completion of the Crew-7 mission and is scheduled to launch Axiom Space’s fourth private mission to the ISS in the spring. If this new plan goes into effect, the Starliner astronauts could return home on March 19 after spending 286 days in space.
Typically, astronauts spend about six months aboard the ISS, with some staying in space for just over a year. Although the length of time in space is not exceptional, the story of the Starliner astronauts has attracted global media attention and even gained political prominence after Trump’s inauguration. Despite the fact that the crew made an unsuccessful spaceflight, the astronauts were not abandoned and do not need an expedited rescue mission.
