SpaceX waives off attempt to launch crew-swap mission that will allow astronauts on extended stay in space to return
CNN
By Jackie Wattles, CNN
(CNN) — A crew of international astronauts slated to launch to the International Space Station on a mission that will take the reins from NASA’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, allowing them to return home after an unexpectedly extended and politically charged journey, will have to wait a bit longer.
The Crew-10 flight, part of a routine ISS staff rotation, is jointly operated by NASA and SpaceX. Takeoff was slated for Wednesday evening from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but the company waived off the launch attempt because of an issue with the launchpad’s ground system.
The problem stemmed from a hydraulics system used to control one of two clamps that hold on to the upper portion of the rocket as it sits vertically on the ground pad before launch.
“This is a ground issue. Everything was fine with the rocket and the spacecraft,” NASA spokesperson Darrol Nail said on the livestream.
SpaceX said earlier Wednesday that it could launch the Crew-10 mission again as soon as Thursday at 7:26 p.m. ET, though a decision to use that opportunity has not yet been made.
When the mission launches, a SpaceX Dragon capsule, riding atop one of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets, will carry the four Crew-10 astronauts — NASA’s Nichole Ayers and Anne McClain, Takuya Onishi with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov — to orbit.
Once at the space station, Ayers, McClain, Onishi and Peskov will spend a few days acclimating to the orbiting laboratory during a handover period with the Crew-9 astronauts, a team that includes Williams and Wilmore, as well as NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos’ Aleksandr Gorbunov.
Williams, Wilmore and the rest of Crew-9 will return to Earth once that handover period concludes. The Crew-9 team was slated to undock from the station on March 16 if the Wednesday’s launch attempt was successful. It’s not clear how much the departure may shift now that SpaceX has called off a possible liftoff Wednesday.
Williams and Wilmore have been in orbit since last June when they piloted the inaugural crewed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule. They expected to remain in space for about a week. But numerous issues detected during their trip to the ISS, including helium leaks and propulsion issues, prompted NASA to deem the Starliner vehicle too risky to return with astronauts on board.
While Crew-9 and Crew-10 are part of routine operations carried out by NASA and SpaceX to keep the space station fully staffed, the missions have become the focus of public controversy involving claims by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk — the SpaceX CEO who is now a top presidential adviser — about former President Joe Biden’s administration.
Though NASA announced in August — before the 2024 election or Trump’s inauguration — that it planned to return Williams and Wilmore to Earth on a SpaceX vehicle, Musk has this year repeatedly claimed that Trump’s predecessor denied an offer from SpaceX to bring Williams and Wilmore home earlier for “political reasons.”
Musk has not said what exactly may have been proposed or to whom it was offered.
An extended stay in space
A former senior NASA official told CNN that SpaceX never communicated such a proposition to agency leadership — and NASA likely would not have entertained the idea regardless.
If Musk had made the offer to someone outside NASA leadership, the source noted, “I’m sure they would have responded and said, ‘Well, that would cost us several $100 million extra that we don’t have for a new Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 (rocket).’”
And in an August 2024 news conference, Steve Stich, the program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, told reporters that the space agency “never considered that option” — referring to the idea of flying a separate SpaceX mission dedicated to retrieving Williams and Wilmore rather than returning them to Earth aboard a routine, prescheduled flight.
“It just didn’t make sense to go ahead and accelerate a (SpaceX) flight to return Butch and Suni earlier,” Stich said.
Still, Musk has said in interviews and social media posts that he made the offer to and was rebuffed by the Biden White House — though it’s not clear why he would not have brought the proposal to mission organizers at NASA.
A former White House staffer did not respond to a request for comment.
When NASA made the bombshell announcement in August 2024 that the Starliner would fly home empty, Williams and Wilmore were reassigned to a SpaceX crew mission. That meant the pair would join the official ISS staff and Crew-9, which launched in September with two seats empty for Williams and Wilmore to occupy.
While Crew-9 was originally slated to return as soon as February, however, NASA said in December the mission would be delayed to late March because of issues with a new Crew Dragon capsule SpaceX was preparing to fly the Crew-10 astronauts.
Last month, the space agency announced SpaceX would move up the Crew-10 launch date several weeks by opting to use a different, previously flown Crew Dragon capsule for the mission.
NASA has maintained that it’s essential to launch the Crew-10 staff to the ISS and allow the dayslong handover to take place prior to Williams, Wilmore and the rest of the Crew-9 astronauts returning to Earth.
Williams and Wilmore’s comments
The decision to keep Williams and Wilmore on the ISS rather than launch an emergency mission to return them to Earth was made as part of NASA’s efforts to keep the space station fully staffed. It allowed the veteran astronauts to step in and aid day-to-day activity on the orbiting lab, as both had been trained before their Starliner test flight to join the ISS crew as part of NASA’s contingency planning.
The space agency seeks to keep at least four representatives from the US and its partner countries on board the laboratory at all times.
For their part, Williams and Wilmore have repeatedly said they enjoy their time in space.
“This is my happy place,” Williams said in September. “I love being up here in space. It’s just fun. You know, every day you do something that’s work — quote, unquote — you can do it upside down. You can do it sideways, so it adds a little different perspective.”
They have also sought to dispel accusations that they were left behind by the previous administration.
“That’s been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck — and I get it, we both get it,” Wilmore told CNN’s Anderson Cooper last month when asked to respond to Musk’s and Trump’s comments on the mission. “Help us change the narrative, let’s change it to: prepared and committed despite what you’ve been hearing. That’s what we prefer.”
Still, Wilmore added fuel to speculation about Musk’s claims regarding an offer to return the astronauts early during a news conference conducted from the space station on March 4.
“I can only say that Mr. Musk, what he says is absolutely factual,” Wilmore said.
However, he added, “We have no information on that, though whatsoever. What was offered, what was, what was not offered, who was offered to, how that process went, that’s information that we simply don’t have.”
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