NASA‘s two stuck astronauts have been given more bad news as their space mission is extended again and are now not expected back until spring.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore, 61, and Suni Williams, 58, left the International Space Station in June and expected to return home just eight days later.
However, their mission grew months longer after NASA decided to send the company’s faulty Starliner capsule back empty in September.
NASA has now announced their mission has been pushed back again, as their relief team has been delayed another month, and their expected return would mark ten months since they left Earth.
The next crew of four was supposed to launch in February, followed by Wilmore and Williams’ return home at the end of the month alongside two other astronauts.
However, the most recent announcement said that SpaceX needs more time to prepare the brand-new capsule for liftoff and it’s now scheduled no earlier than late March.
NASA said that it considered using a different SpaceX capsule to fly up the replacement crew to keep the flights on schedule, but decided they would wait for the new capsule.
Earlier this year, at their 60-day mark, many fans reacted to the horror of the situation on social media and described the delay as ‘torture’.
Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were only meant to spend a week in space and have now been told their excruciating wait will last at least another month
NASA has now announced their mission has been pushed back again, as their relief team has been delayed another month
One commenter wrote: ‘Stuck in space for 60 days with no known solution is inhumane and torture.
‘Why did y’all teams send those astronauts in the first place? Where is the Change.Org petition to bring back the astronauts?’
Another worried commenter wrote: ‘Hope they come back alive and tell us about it. Nightmarish. Only happens in movies.’
The scandal-laden Starliner – which was built and developed using over $4 billion of taxpayer money – had been plagued by helium leaks and thruster issues in the weeks leading up to launch, and even on the day of.
The spacecraft safely delivered Williams and Wilmore to the ISS, but by the time it got there, it had sprung more helium leaks and five of its 28 thrusters had failed.
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft was plagued by technical issues even before in launched on June 5. NASA ultimately deemed it unsafe to return its crew to Earth.
The next crew of four was supposed to launch in February, followed by Wilmore and Williams’ return home at the end of the month alongside two other astronauts
The decision for their delayed return was humiliating for Boeing, which has struggled for years to get their Starliner program off the ground only to be bailed out at the eleventh hour by their biggest competitor.
‘We have had so many embarrassments lately, we’re under a microscope. This just made it, like, 100 times worse,’ one employee anonymously told the New York Post.
‘We hate SpaceX,’ he added. ‘We talk s*** about them all the time, and now they’re bailing us out.’
A number of commenters fixated on the rivalry between Boeing and rival company SpaceX founded by Elon Musk.
Both companies are part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) but while Boeing’s Starliner has been mired in failures SpaceX capsules and rockets are used routinely.
On X, which is also owned by Mr Musk, one commenter wrote: ‘Space X needs to go rescue them.’
Another added: ‘Elon is going to have to get them isn’t he…’
‘How much is Elon going to charge for the uber lift home?’, another asked jokingly.
NASA prefers to have overlapping crews at the space station for smoother transitions, according to officials.
While Wilmore and Williams are used to long haul missions, typically most missions last six months with only a few reaching a full year.