The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has finally confirmed the date of astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore’s return space flight to Earth. The two astronauts will return to the Earth in February 2025 aboard the Dragon capsule of SpaceX, owned by billionaire Elon Musk.
NASA officials said that currently it is ‘too risky’ to bring them back to Earth. Hence, the Starliner spacecraft will return to Earth without the two astronauts. Starliner is expected to make a safe, controlled autonomous re-entry and landing in early September.
“Wilmore and Williams will continue their work formally as part of the Expedition 71/72 crew through February 2025. They will fly home aboard a Dragon spacecraft with two other crew members assigned to the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission.
The two astronauts were launched to the ISS on June 5 for what was expected to be an eight-day test mission. There were repeated glitches with the Boeing Starliner even before its launch. NASA and Boeing discovered helium leaks and there were complaints of issues with spacecraft reaction control thrusters on June 6. Experts have completed a significant amount of work, including reviewing a collection of data, conducting flight and ground testing, hosting independent reviews with agency propulsion experts, and developing various return contingency plans. NASA, however, feared the capsule would not be able to achieve the thrust necessary to return to Earth and decided to transfer William and Wilmore to a SpaceX mission and return the Starliner empty.
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