SpaceX Crew Dragons swapped so ISS crew can go home early

'Stranded' Starliner astronauts set for a March homecoming

The crew of the Boeing Starliner test mission is set to return to Earth ahead of schedule after managers decided to swap the Crew Dragon originally planned for the Axiom-4 flight with Crew-10.

The flight carrying Crew-10 – NASA astros Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, commander and pilot; and mission specialists JAXA 'naut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov – was originally slated to launch no earlier than this month. After a handover period, Crew-9, which consists of astronauts Suni Williams, Nick Hague, Butch Wilmore, and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, would then have returned to Earth. However, problems with the new Crew Dragon vehicle meant a delay to late March.

Rather than risk further hold-ups, managers have decided to use a previously flown Crew Dragon, originally assigned to the Axiom-4 mission.

The launch of Crew-10 is targeting Wednesday, March 12, assuming all goes well with the spacecraft and preparations for the mission. A handover would then occur on the International Space Station (ISS), and Crew-9 would return to Earth a few days later.

The decision to make the Starliner crew, Williams and Wilmore, part of Crew-9 was taken last year when NASA opted to return the Boeing spacecraft to Earth uncrewed due to issues with the vehicle's thrusters. The move meant an extended stay aboard the ISS for the pair of astronauts.

Crew-9 was launched with a crew of two – Hague and Gorbunov – rather than the usual four, in order to accommodate Williams and Wilmore.

Political pressure to return Williams and Wilmore to Earth mounted last month, although the decision to switch Crew Dragon spacecraft is more likely to have been based on pragmatism rather than political expediency. Planning for the change will have also begun well in advance of its announcement.

Steve Stich, manager, NASA's Commercial Crew Program, paid tribute to SpaceX, and said, "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."

SpaceX also has a multi-billion-dollar contract with the US space agency to transport crew to and from the ISS.

This will be the fourth mission to the station for this Crew Dragon, which previously supported NASA's Crew-3, Crew-5, and Crew-7 flights.

What this means for Axiom-4, which includes the European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, is unclear. The mission is now slated for launch at some point in May. However, it could be pushed back as far as 2026 if there are further delays. The ISS only has so many docking ports, and other missions, such as SpaceX's cargo flights, also need to be accommodated.

The Register understands that one of the uncrewed SpaceX Dragon missions will test the reboost capabilities of the spacecraft, which is deemed a priority by managers. As such, managers have limited options for further shuffling. ®