NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore won’t return before March 19

Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore should have been back on Earth nine months ago. Instead, they’ve been orbiting the planet aboard the International Space Station (ISS), waiting for a ride home. What was supposed to be an eight-day mission in June 2024 turned into an extended stay due to critical technical failures with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Now, NASA has confirmed that they will not return before March 19, 2025.

Their return hinges on the successful launch and docking of the SpaceX Crew-10 mission, which will bring four astronauts to the ISS to replace Williams and Wilmore. The mission has faced repeated delays, primarily due to poor weather conditions and a last-minute technical issue with the Falcon 9 rocket.

Delays, Technical Issues, and Uncertain Timelines

The SpaceX Crew-10 mission, which will bring NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA’s Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos’ Kirill Peskov to the ISS, has been postponed multiple times. Initially scheduled to launch earlier, the mission was delayed by strong winds and heavy precipitation along the flight path. Then, just hours before a rescheduled launch, engineers detected a critical hydraulic system issue in the ground support clamp arm of the Falcon 9 rocket at Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A.

NASA now says Crew-10 is targeting a launch at 7:03 p.m. EDT on March 14, 2025. The weather forecast is promising, with a greater-than-95% chance of acceptable conditions for that window. But if it slips to March 15 or 16, there’s a 50-60% chance that conditions won’t be favourable, raising the possibility of further delays.

Once Crew-10 arrives on March 15, they will spend a few days adjusting before officially taking over ISS operations. Only