Stranded astronauts have to return to Tuesday

NASA and SpaceX said the weather conditions were analyzed during a meeting of experts from the US Room Trip Authority NASA and the Private Space Company SpaceX by Tech billionaire Elon Musk.

The night of Tuesday was the best time for the return flight. It is currently planned that the “Crew 9” leaves the ISS on Tuesday at 6.05 am Central European time. Shortly before 11 p.m. her capsule in the sea would land off the coast of the US state of Florida. This planning can also be postponed for various reasons in the short term. Wednesday was originally the target as a day of return.

“Crew 10” replaces “Crew 9”
During the weekend, a space capsule with the new ISS crew had reached the outpost of humanity. The SpaceX space ship “Crew Dragon” Docte almost 420 kilometers above the Atlantic Ocean on the space station on Sunday at 5.04 hours CET. NASA Live images of the maneuver showed how the crew of the ISS and the newcomers embraced as a greeting.

With the “Crew Dragon” The Four-Person “Crew 10”, consisting of American astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, the Japanese Astronaut Takuya Onishi and the Russian Kosmonaut Kirill Peskow. Originally the start was already planned for last Wednesday, but then it had to be postponed on the ground due to a hydraulic problem. The problem can be solved later.

The “crew 10” must stay in space until autumn. After a transfer time in the international space station, she replaces the “crew 9”, which, in addition to Williams and Wilmore, also includes her American colleague Nick Hague and Russian Kosmonaut Alexander Gorbunow. Hague and Gorbunow were only added at the end of September, while Williams and Wilmore have been to the ISS since the beginning of June. The American astronaut Don Pettit as well as the two Russian space travelers Alexej Owtschinin and Iwan Wagner, who were also there in September, remain on board.

Breakdown series about the spaceship “Starliner”
Williams and Wilmore should only stay in space for about a week. But then there were technical problems on their “Starliner” spacecraft after the arrival. For security reasons, NASA therefore decided to bring the spaceship back to Earth in September.

The “Starliner” was developed by the American company Boeing on behalf of NASA as an alternative to SpaceX’s “Crew Dragon” to bring astronauts to the ISS. But the project has repeatedly set sets and years of delays. Management of test flights were repeatedly moved to the spaceship and the rocket due to technical problems. When Williams and Wilmore finally arrived at the ISS in June, the 58-year-old and her 61-year-old colleague suddenly sat there. Both had been in space twice. This experience should have helped them deal with the situation.