Known as EnduranceThe spacecraft was subsequently flying by the private Axiom-4 mission to the space station later this spring. Sources said SpaceX is now working on a no-herarlier-dan March 12 launch date for crew-10 Endurance. If this flight takes place on time and the date is not certain, because it depends on other missions on SpaceX's Falcon 9-manifest-very-golden the crew-9-astronauts, including Wilmore and Williams, can fly home on March 19. They would have spent 286 days in the room. Although it is not a record for a NASA Human SpaceFlight, this would be much longer than their original mission, which is expected to take to 30 days.
The plight situation of Butch and Suni has become increasingly political in the last 10 days, after Donald Trump started his second term in the White House. A little more than a week ago, Trump said: “I just asked Elon Musk and @Spacex to get the 2 brave astronauts who have almost been left in space due to the Biden administration. They have been waiting for Space Station for many months.
Musk, the founder of SpaceX, referred to the two astronauts as “stranded” and blamed the Biden administration for so long in space.
Political versus pragmatism
With NASA now possibly the return of Wilmore and Williams with about two weeks, from the beginning of April to mid -March, Trump and Musk can try to score a political victory. But the underlying facts paint a different picture, which suggests pragmatically instead of political reasons.
The plan for Butch and Suni's return was completed last August by NASA and Musk at the time signed as Chief Executive of SpaceX. Their original return date on crew-9 was delayed due to a technical problem with a SpaceX vehicle. In recent months, since NASA has followed the development of the C213 vehicle, they worked on an unforeseen plan plan in which the spacecraft of Axiom was exchanged. This plan was set in motion before Trump was approaching. It is now lit green.
At this point, if NASA was waiting until C213 was ready to launch the Crew-10 mission, the Space Station program 'Redlines' would approach food, water and other supplies for crew members on board the station. The agency also juggles many competitive priorities in terms of freight and crews to the station. The bottom line is that they really needed this crew rotation to occur sooner instead of performing later.
