Two NASA astronauts who traveled to the International Space Station (ISS) on the troubled Boeing Starliner spacecraft will be having their stay in space extended yet again, as they will now not return to Earth until late March 2025 at the earliest.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams lifted off in the Starliner on June 5 this year for what was originally intended to be a one-week trip. However problems with the thrusters of the Starliner meant that the spacecraft had to stay docked to the ISS for months, and eventually NASA decided it would rather bring the astronauts home using a SpaceX Dragon craft instead.
That meant that the Starliner departed the station without the two astronauts, and it did return to Earth safely. Wilmore and Williams then joined the SpaceX Crew-9, along with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. The four members of Crew-9 had been scheduled to return to Earth in February of next year, but this has now been pushed back by a month.
While there have been tabloid worries about the astronauts being unwell or underfed on the station, NASA has assured the public that they are safe and are not losing weight. It is not unusual for astronauts to spend up to a year on the ISS, and there are plenty of supplies available for the crew.
The return of Crew-9 has been delayed so that they can have a handover period with the upcoming Crew-10 mission, in which both sets of crews are on the station at the same time to pass over information and to help ease the new crew into their stay. The Crew-10 launch has been delayed until late March so that NASA and SpaceX teams can work on a new Dragon spacecraft for the mission, which is due to arrive at a SpaceX facility in Florida next month.
“Fabrication, assembly, testing, and final integration of a new spacecraft is a painstaking endeavor that requires great attention to detail,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, in a statement. “We appreciate the hard work by the SpaceX team to expand the Dragon fleet in support of our missions and the flexibility of the station program and expedition crews as we work together to complete the new capsule’s readiness for flight.”
NASA has also affirmed that the ISS is well stocked with good, water, oxygen, and other necessities, as it has recently welcomed two resupply craft, so the members of Crew-9 will not experience any deprivations while in orbit.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.