Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore should have been back to earth nine months ago. However, they have been orbiting the planet aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Sunita Williams return date: Sunita Williams, the Indian-origin astronaut, and Butch Wilmore are scheduled to leave the International Space Station (ISS) at the earliest by March 19, the American space agency NASA said. NASA said that its SpaceX Crew-10 is targeting no earlier than 7:03 PM on March 14 as the window for launch of the Transporter-13 mission.
The mission, which was earlier scheduled on Thursday, got delayed due to high winds and precipitation forecasted in the flight path. It seeks to launch four crew members to the ISS.
Additionally, launch teams are working to address a hydraulic system issue with a ground support clamp arm for the Falcon 9 rocket at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
With a March 14 Crew-10 launch, the Crew-9 mission with NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, would depart the space station no earlier than Wednesday, March 19, pending weather at the splashdown locations off the coast of Florida.
According to a report, the launch conditions are favourable, with more than a 95 per cent chance of acceptable weather. However, if the launch date is further pushed to March 15 or 16, forecasts indicate almost 50 to 60 per cent of unsuitable conditions.
NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov will remain in Astronaut Crew Quarters at NASA Kennedy in Florida.
Crew-10 is the 10th crew rotation mission of SpaceX’s human space transportation system and its 11th flight with crew aboard, including the Demo-2 test flight, to the space station through NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
This will be the 13th flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched Crew-7, CRS-29, PACE, Transporter-10, EarthCARE, NROL-186, and six Starlink missions. Following stage separation, Falcon 9 will land on Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4) at Vandenberg Space Force Base.
Transporter-13 is a dedicated smallsat rideshare mission. There are 74 payloads on this flight.
(With inputs from ANI)
