NASA's stranded astronauts Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore to get earlier homecoming

Feb. 11 (UPI) -- Two NASA astronauts, stranded at the International Space Station since June, could return to Earth weeks earlier than originally scheduled after SpaceX agreed to swap capsules for its upcoming crewed flights.

NASA announced Tuesday that the agency's Crew-10 launch is now targeting March 12, which is two weeks earlier than initially planned, to bring home Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.

"Human spaceflight is full of unexpected challenges. Our operational flexibility is enabled by the tremendous partnership between NASA and SpaceX and the agility SpaceX continues to demonstrate to safely meet the agency's emerging needs," Steve Stich, NASA's commercial crew program manager, said in a statement.

"We greatly benefit from SpaceX's commercial efforts and their proactive approach in having another spacecraft ready for us to assess and use in support of Crew-10," Stich added.

Wilmore and Williams have been stranded on ISS for more than eight months after arriving on Boeing's new Starliner spaceship during a test flight. While the astronauts were only scheduled to spend a few days at the space station, a problem with Starliner's thrusters forced NASA to send the spacecraft back to Earth unmanned.

The astronauts' return was delayed several times until NASA decided in August to send the pair back to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft early this year.

"NASA and SpaceX are accelerating the target launch and return dates for the upcoming crew rotation missions to and from the space station," NASA wrote Tuesday in a post on X. "Crew-10 launch now is targeted for March 12, pending mission readiness and completion of flight readiness."

The Crew-10 mission will carry NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.

"After Crew-10 arrives to the space station, Crew-9 will help the newly arrived crew familiarize with ongoing science and station maintenance work, which supports a safer transition of operations aboard the orbital complex," NASA said Tuesday.

Wilmore and Williams will return aboard the same spacecraft with Crew-9 astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.