NASA to bring Boeing astronauts home days earlier than expected after SpaceX capsule switch-up

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NASA on Tuesday said it may bring home Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — the two astronauts who launched on Boeing Starliner’s first crewed test flight and have remained on the space station months longer than expected — a couple weeks sooner than previously announced.

The space agency said it was able to adjust the schedule because it opted to swap the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule it will use to fly its Crew-10 mission, which will now launch as soon as March 12 “pending mission readiness.” The new date could put Williams and Wilmore’s scheduled return days ahead of schedule, as the space agency previously said it was targeting late March.

The Crew-10 astronauts must arrive at the International Space Station before Williams and Wilmore, who are currently assigned to the Crew-9 mission, can complete their rotation on the orbiting laboratory and head back to Earth.

The Crew-9 spacecraft, the Crew Dragon Freedom that’s currently docked to the space station, can “return to Earth following a several day handover period with the newly arrived Crew-10 expedition crew,” according to a statement from the US space agency.

The announcement comes after SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump sowed confusion about the Starliner astronauts’ situation and attempted to claim credit for their return on a SpaceX capsule — a plan that had been in place for months.

In posts on X, the social media platform Musk purchased in 2022, Musk said that Trump had directed him to bring Williams and Wilmore home “as soon as possible.”

“We will do so,” Musk’s post read. “Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long.”

But NASA officials had in August announced plans to return Williams and Wilmore using a SpaceX vehicle — well before Musk or Trump mentioned the mission.

NASA had expected to use a newly built Crew Dragon capsule to launch Crew-10 as soon as February, but in December the space agency revealed that mission teams needed additional “time to complete processing” on the SpaceX capsule. That’s why the return date of Williams and Wilmore’s Crew-9 mission shifted from February to late March.

With the latest plans NASA announced, however, the agency will instead make use of the Crew Dragon Endurance, which has previously flown three missions, most recently the Crew-7 mission that returned to Earth in March 2024 after a seven-month stay at the space station.

Boeing Starliner crew’s extended mission

Williams and Wilmore have been on the space station since last June. Piloting the inaugural crewed mission of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, the pair experienced a rocky journey to the space station. The astronauts were initially slated to spend about a week at the orbiting laboratory.

After Starliner arrived at the space station, NASA and Boeing worked for weeks to better understand the problems — including helium leaks and propulsion issues — that plagued the first leg of the test flight.

NASA officials ultimately decided it was too risky to return Starliner with crew. Williams and Wilmore have since become official members of the space station staff as they await their return home along with the other members of the SpaceX Crew-9 mission, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.

The Crew-10 mission that will relieve Williams and Wilmore of their prolonged stay in low-Earth orbit includes NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.

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