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NASA's two stuck astronauts are just a few weeks away from finally returning to Earth after nine months in space. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have to wait until their replacements arrive at the International Space Station next week before they can check out later this month. They'll be joined on their SpaceX ride home by two astronauts who launched by themselves in September alongside two empty seats. During a news conference Tuesday, Wilmore said that while politics is part of life, it did not play into his and Williams' return, moved up a couple weeks thanks to a change in SpaceX capsules. President Donald Trump and SpaceX's Elon Musk said at the end of January that they wanted to accelerate the astronauts' return, blaming the previous administration. But Williams, in response to a question, did take issue with Musk's recent call to dump the space station in two years, rather than waiting until NASA's projected deorbit in 2031. She noted all the scientific research being ...
NASA's two stuck astronauts may come back to 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. With even more work s
NASA announced more delays Thursday in sending astronauts back to the moon more than 50 years after Apollo. Administrator Bill Nelson said the next mission in the Artemis program -- flying four astronauts around the moon and back is now targeted for April 2026. It had been on the books for September 2025, after slipping from this year. The investigation into heat shield damage from the capsule's initial test flight two years ago took time, officials said, and other spacecraft improvements are still needed. This bumps the third Artemis mission a moon landing by two other astronauts to at least 2027. NASA had been aiming for 2026. NASA's Artemis program, a follow-up to the Apollo moonshots of the late 1960s and early 1970s, has completed only one mission. An empty Orion capsule circled the moon in 2022 after blasting off on NASA's new Space Launch System rocket. Although the launch and lunar laps went well, the capsule returned with an excessively charred and eroded bottom heat .
Two Indian astronauts chosen for the upcoming Axiom-4 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) have completed the initial phase of training, the ISRO has said. Accorsing to ISRO, towards the goal of accomplishing a joint ISRO-NASA effort to the International Space Station, the two Gaganyatris (Prime-Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla and Backup-Group Captain Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair) assigned for Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) commenced their training in the USA from first week of August,2024. The initial phase of training has been completed successfully by the Gaganyatris. During this phase of training, the Gaganyatris have completed initial orientations for mission-related ground facility tours, initial overview of mission launch phases, SpaceX suit fit checks, and selected space food options, it said. Furthermore, the training also included familiarization sessions with the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and various onboard systems of the International Space Station, including photogra
Three NASA astronauts whose prolonged space station mission ended with a trip to the hospital last month have declined to say which one of them was sick. Astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps Friday publicly discussed their spaceflight for the first time since returning from the International Space Station on Oct 25. They spent nearly eight months in orbit, longer than expected because of all the trouble with Boeing's Starliner crew capsule and rough weather, including Hurricane Milton. Soon after their SpaceX capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast, the three were taken to a hospital in nearby Pensacola along with Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, who launched with them back in March. One of the Americans ended up spending the night there for an undisclosed medical issue. NASA declined to say who was hospitalised or why, citing medical privacy. When asked at Friday's news conference which one had been sick, the astronauts ...
A NASA astronaut was taken to the hospital for an undisclosed medical issue after returning from a nearly eight-month space station stay extended by Boeing's capsule trouble and Hurricane Milton, the space agency said on Friday. A SpaceX capsule carrying three Americans and one Russian parachuted before dawn into the Gulf of Mexico just off the Florida coast after undocking from the International Space Station mid-week. Soon after splashdown, NASA said one of its astronauts had a medical issue" and the crew was flown to a hospital in Pensacola, Florida, as a precaution. The astronaut, who was not identified, was in stable condition and remained at the hospital as a "precautionary measure, the space agency said in a statement. The others returned to Houston. It can take days or even weeks for astronauts to readjust to gravity after living in weightlessness for several months. The astronauts should have been back two months ago. But their homecoming was stalled by problems with Boe
Four astronauts returned to Earth on Friday after a nearly eight-month space station stay extended by Boeing's capsule trouble and Hurricane Milton. A SpaceX capsule carrying the crew parachuted before dawn into the Gulf of Mexico just off the Florida coast after undocking from the International Space Station mid-week. The three Americans and one Russian should have been back two months ago. But their homecoming was stalled by problems with Boeing's new Starliner astronaut capsule, which came back empty in September because of safety concerns. Then Hurricane Milton interfered, followed by another two weeks of high wind and rough seas. SpaceX launched the four NASA's Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, and Russia's Alexander Grebenkin in March. Barratt, the only space veteran going into the mission, acknowledged the support teams back home that had to replan, retool and kind of redo everything right along with us ... and helped us to roll with all those ...
The two astronauts stuck at the International Space Station since June welcomed their new ride home with Sunday's arrival of a SpaceX capsule. SpaceX launched the rescue mission on Saturday with a downsized crew of two astronauts and two empty seats reserved for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who will return next year. The Dragon capsule docked in darkness high over Botswana as the two craft soared 420 kilometres above Earth. NASA switched Wilmore and Williams to SpaceX following concerns over the safety of their Boeing Starliner capsule. It was the first Starliner test flight with a crew, and NASA decided the thruster failures and helium leaks that cropped up after liftoff were too serious and poorly understood to risk the test pilots' return. So Starliner returned to Earth empty earlier this month. The Dragon carrying NASA's Nick Hague and the Russian Space Agency's Alexander Gorbunov will remain at the space station until February, turning what should have been a weeklong trip
SpaceX launched a rescue mission for the two stuck astronauts at the International Space Station on Saturday, sending up a downsized crew to bring them home but not until next year. The capsule rocketed into orbit to fetch the test pilots whose Boeing spacecraft returned to Earth empty earlier this month because of safety concerns. The switch in rides left it to NASA's Nick Hague and Russia's Alexander Gorbunov to retrieve Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Since NASA rotates space station crews approximately every six months, this newly launched flight with two empty seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams won't return until late February. Officials said there wasn't a way to bring them back earlier on SpaceX without interrupting other scheduled missions. By the time they return, the pair will have logged more than eight months in space. They expected to be gone just a week when they signed up for Boeing's first astronaut flight that launched in June. NASA ultimately decided that ..