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NASA will swap Dragon spacecraft on the ground to return Butch and Suni sooner

NASA can no longer wait on the development of a new Crew Dragon vehicle.

Eric Berger – | 150
NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, seen in their Boeing flight suits. Credit: NASA/Francisco Martin
NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, seen in their Boeing flight suits. Credit: NASA/Francisco Martin

NASA should soon announce a new plan for the return of two of its astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, to Earth as early as March 19. This is about two weeks earlier than the existing public timeline for their flight home from the International Space Station.

Bringing the two astronauts back to Earth next month will require some shuffling of spacecraft here on the ground and a delay of the privately operated Axiom-4 mission to the International Space Station to later in the spring.

Wilmore and Williams flew to the station on Boeing's Starliner in June 2024. The plight of "Butch and Suni," as they are often referred to, was a major story in the space community last summer after their Starliner spacecraft experienced significant propulsion issues before docking. NASA ultimately decided the safest course would be for the pair to return home on a SpaceX Dragon vehicle, and launched the Crew-9 mission last September with two empty seats. Thus, Butch and Suni's ride home has been docked to the station since last fall.

Shuffling spacecraft

At that point the pair joined the Crew-9 mission, alongside NASA's Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, and were scheduled to fly home in February. However, there was a late-developing technical issue with a new Dragon vehicle SpaceX is building, C213. Its first flight was to be Crew-10, the next NASA mission to the station. These four astronauts were to relieve Crew-9, allowing Butch and Suni to fly home. In December, NASA publicly announced a delay of the Crew-10 launch to no earlier than "late March." This would bring Crew-9 home in early April.

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SpaceX and NASA are still working to resolve the C213 Dragon issue, which may be related to batteries on the spacecraft. NASA now believes the vehicle will not be ready for its debut launch until late April. Therefore, according to sources at the agency, NASA has decided to swap vehicles for Crew-10. The space agency has asked SpaceX to bring forward the C210 vehicle, which returned to Earth last March after completing the Crew-7 mission.

Known as Endurance, the spacecraft was next due to fly the private Axiom-4 mission to the space station later this spring. Sources said SpaceX is now working toward a no-earlier-than March 12 launch date for Crew-10 on Endurance. If this flight occurs on time—and the date is not certain, as it depends on other missions on SpaceX's Falcon 9 manifest—the Crew-9 astronauts, including Wilmore and Williams, could fly home on March 19. They would have spent 286 days in space. Although not a record for a NASA human spaceflight, this would be far longer than their original mission, which was expected to last eight to 30 days.

The plight of Butch and Suni has become increasingly political in the last 10 days after Donald Trump began his second term in the White House. A little more than a week ago, Trump said, "I have just asked Elon Musk and @SpaceX to 'go get' the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration. They have been waiting for many months on Space Station. Elon will soon be on his way. Hopefully, all will be safe. Good luck."

Musk, the founder of SpaceX, referred to the two astronauts as "stranded" and blamed the Biden administration for leaving them in space so long.

Politics versus pragmatism

With NASA now potentially advancing the return of Wilmore and Williams by about two weeks, from early April to mid-March, Trump and Musk may seek to score a political win. But the underlying facts paint a different picture, suggesting pragmatic rather than political rationale.

The plan for Butch and Suni's return was finalized by NASA last August, and Musk signed off on it as chief executive of SpaceX at the time. Their original return date on Crew-9 was delayed due to a technical problem with a SpaceX vehicle. In recent months, as NASA has monitored the development of the C213 vehicle, they worked on a contingency plan involving the swapping of Axiom's spacecraft. This plan was set into motion before Trump came into office. It has now been greenlit.

At this point, if NASA waited for C213 to be ready to launch the Crew-10 mission, the space station program would start to approach 'redlines' on food, water, and other supplies for crew members on board the station. The agency is also juggling a lot of competing priorities in terms of cargo and crew missions to the station. The bottom line is that they really needed this crew rotation to occur sooner rather than later.

Photo of Eric Berger
Eric Berger Senior Space Editor
Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.
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