A mission intended to bring two astronauts left on the International Space Station much longer than originally planned back to Earth is currently in limbo after the launch was aborted. The delay may last as little as two days, but it comes uncomfortably close to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s claims that political interference prevented the astronauts’ return months ago.
The launch has been rescheduled to Friday, March 14, which would be a minor delay compared to the nine months astronauts Suni Willians and Barry Wilmore have been aboard the ISS. However, it’s not clear if that timeline will definitely work out since specific details of the problem are not public.
The Space Station’s daily blog has yet to be updated, but NASA’s website reads; “NASA and SpaceX have scrubbed Wednesday’s launch attempt of the agency’s Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station due to a hydraulic system issue with a ground support clamp arm for the Falcon 9 rocket at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.” This is followed by a timeline of the implications for future launch windows.
Keeping the delay to one day was rejected because of “high winds and precipitation forecasted in the flight path of Dragon,” but also allows more time to assess the problem
NASA also reminds readers that, as well as bringing back Williams and Wilmore, the mission is to take NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Takuya Onishi of JAXA, and Roscosmos’s Kirill Peskov to the ISS.
SpaceX’s X (Twitter) account states; “Standing down from tonight’s launch opportunity of @NASA’s mission to the @Space_Station,” before subsequently reporting the new date is “targeting no earlier than Friday, March 14”. In between, the account celebrates Falcon9’s success record by reporting on the successful launch of 21 Starlink satellites.
It’s common for launches to be delayed for a variety of reasons. We only tend to remember the ones that should have been scrapped and weren’t – like the 1986 Challenger launch – however, the context here is unusual.
Williams and Wilmore flew to the ISS in June on the first crewed mission of Boeing’s Starliner, and were intended to return that month. Although they got there safely, the problems that have bedeviled Boeing’s aircraft recently appear not to stop at the Karman line.
Thrusters malfunctioned as the Starliner approached the ISS, leading to concerns about the safety of the return voyage. After repeated delays, NASA abandoned plans to bring the astronauts back on Starliner.
Despite fears Starliner would explode on reentry, it made it back safely in September, but without the astronauts, who were instructed to stay behind given the uncertainty.
NASA eventually settled on bringing Williams and Wilmore back with the Crew-10 using the same launch that would take the four astronauts up. Instead of taking the PR victory for picking up where Boeing left off, Musk alleged Joe Biden had abandoned the pair.
When the astronauts themselves denied this and former ISS commander Andreas Morgan called it a lie, Musk hit back with a slur. Twin astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly, (the latter now Senator for Arizona), hit back.
Musk claimed he had offered to bring Willams and Wilmore back to Earth last year, but been rebuffed because of his connection to Trump. The claim makes little sense given the awarding of the task to SpaceX while Biden was still in office. The astronauts themselves stated they had never heard of this offer, with Wilmore saying; “From my standpoint, politics is not playing into this at all.” No one else at NASA has indicated they were aware of it either. Musk has since called Mark Kelly a “traitor”.
