SpaceX on Wednesday scrubbed the expected launch of a replacement crew of four astronauts to the International Space Station that would have set in motion the long-awaited homecoming of U.S. astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been stuck in space for nine months after a trip on Boeing's faulty Starliner.
SpaceX called off the flight over a last-minute technical issue with the rocket's launchpad, officials said on a livestream of the launch countdown.
It was not immediately clear when the next launch opportunity would be. The reason for the scrub suggests that SpaceX and NASA could try to launch again in the coming days.
NASA had been set to launch a SpaceX rocket from Florida carrying a replacement crew for the International Space Station in a mission that would set up the return to Earth of Wilmore and Williams - stuck in space for nine months after a trip on Boeing's faulty Starliner.
The U.S. space agency had moved up the mission by two weeks after President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, called for Wilmore and Williams to be brought back earlier than NASA had planned.
A planned eight-day stay on the orbiting station has dragged on for Wilmore and Williams, a pair of veteran astronauts and U.S. Navy test pilots. Starliner returned to Earth without them last year.
SpaceX's rocket had been scheduled to blast off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral at 7:48 p.m. ET (2348 GMT) with a crew of two U.S. astronauts and one astronaut each from Japan and Russia.
Wilmore and Williams have been working on research and maintenance with the space station's other astronauts and have remained safe, according to NASA. Williams told reporters in a March 4 call that she is looking forward to seeing her family and pet dogs upon returning home.
"It's been a roller coaster for them, probably a little bit more so than for us," Williams said of her family. "We're here, we have a mission - we're just doing what we do every day, and every day is interesting because we're up in space and it's a lot of fun."
The flight, known as Crew-10, normally would be considered a routine astronaut rotation. Instead, it has become entangled in politics as Trump and Musk have sought - without offering evidence - to blame former President Joe Biden for the delayed return of Wilmore and Williams.
The demands by Trump and Musk for an earlier return were an unusual intervention in NASA's human spaceflight operations. The mission previously had a target date of March 26, but NASA swapped a delayed SpaceX capsule with a different one that would be ready sooner.
When the new crew arrives aboard the station, Wilmore and Williams and two others - NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov - can return to Earth in a capsule that has been attached to the station since September, as part of the prior Crew-9 mission.
Wilmore and Williams cannot leave until the new Crew-10 craft arrives in order to keep the ISS staffed with enough U.S. astronauts for maintenance, according to NASA.
Wilmore and Williams flew to the station in June as the first test crew of Boeing's Starliner, which suffered propulsion system issues in space. NASA deemed it too risky for the astronauts to fly home on the Boeing craft. This led to the current plan to bring them home in a SpaceX capsule.
Boeing built Starliner under a $4.5 billion contract with NASA to compete with SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule, which since 2020 has been the U.S. space agency's only vehicle for sending ISS crew members to orbit from American soil. Last year's mission had marked Starliner's first test flight with astronauts aboard, a requirement before NASA could certify the capsule for routine astronaut missions.
Starliner's development has been plagued with engineering issues and cost overruns since 2019, putting it far behind SpaceX's Crew Dragon, which was developed under a similar NASA contract worth at least $4 billion.
© Thomson Reuters 2025.
11 Comments
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theFu
1 more time, they aren't stuck. They are doing what they love. No need to repeat the lies of Trump and people who can gain from making their competition look bad. This time the competition failed to launch.
When to launch, what to carry up and what to return are non-trivial problems. There are hundreds of people across NASA and many companies feeding into each of those decisions. Then the FAO team works to ensure the crews make it all happen once in space. FAO - Flight Activity Office. I worked for that team for about 3 yrs.
If they really wanted to get back to Earth, they'd have taken an emergency vehicle already.
HopeSpringsEternal
Happens, bad weather especially and correct, they're not stuck but rather intentionally extended for +8 months for political convenience = as Biden Admin couldn't have Musk's SpaceX save the day in the run up to Nov 5th!
iron man
So why did SX scrub the flight NOW? anything related to yet another first stage bang-bang more pollution published recent experience. Or was that the supposed 'Emergency vehicle' equipped with flashing blues???
HopeSpringsEternal
Better to be safe than sorry, SpaceX sending rockets up into orbit about 200x this year, the wait won't be long!
OkinawaRider
Safety first. Good call.
Speed
Trump and Musk really shouldn't do that. They should let NASA go with their original plan which they deemed to be the safest. Political points need not be considered.
Yrral
Giant Firecracker
Peter Neil
nasa categorically denied and documented there was no politics involved in decisions to return them.
unfortunately, very few media covered it. instead, they cover the blatant lies and treachery of musk and the white house.
Primusinter
I wonder if NASA owns such a vehicle.
Unlike you, I have no idea about working in such teams. But according to logic, astronauts planning a one-week flight into space receive training for exactly such a flight. For a longer flight, training should be longer and more expensive. As a doctor, I'm just concerned about the health of these two elderly people. Apparently, there are technical limitations and capabilities of NASA in this whole story. Hardly politics
theFu
I looked up the attached vehicles to the ISS a few weeks ago. There are at least 3 vehicles that could bring astronauts back to Earth there already.
Astronauts accept most risks to be in space and to stay there as long as possible. They won't take stupid risks, however. These are not dumb people. I'd be surprises if there weren't 1 or 2 medical doctors on ISS now as well. There are lots of PhDs, obviously. I'd expect at least 1 MD-PhD there too.
As for training, all astronauts get the same basic space training which is the bulk of the costs. Then for any specific mission, there would be add-on training related to the specific equipment and experiments involved. Having an extra 2 set of expert hands available will make existing experiments less work. Plus, every different human in space will react to duration in space slightly different. There have been humans in space for 371 days at at time. A few individuals have been in space 675 days in total, if each mission for each person were added up. Butch and Suni are below the 371 days still and aren't likely to come close to that record.
Peter Neil
haha. Unmanned cargo supply vessels are not capable of returning people. They stick around to be filled with waste, then released to burn up in the atmosphere.
Only Soyuz M-26 and Crew 9 Dragon are capable. Custom suits are needed and the people who docked in them are completing their missions.
The two U.S. astronauts are not "stranded."