Much like the character Major Tom in David Bowie’s classic hit “Space Oddity,” two NASA astronauts, Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams, are currently “sitting in a tin can, far above the world” with little hope of landing back on Earth anytime soon.
Their eight-day job on the International Space Station has now become eight weeks and counting. The Boeing space shuttle Starliner which brought them to station keeps experiencing technical issues (apparently the thrusters might be leaking helium), preventing it from bringing Butch and Suni back home.
The duo was supposed to return on June 14, but as of the time of this writing, NASA is still not ready to launch Starliner back into space to retrieve them. NASA Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stitch reportedly admitted: “We don’t have a major announcement today relative to a return date. We’re making great progress, but we’re just not quite ready to do that.”
It just so happens that there is a spacecraft already docked at the ISS which could bring them home: the SpaceX Dragon. According to Eric Berger at Ars Technica:
SpaceX has been actively working on a scenario in which two or four astronauts launch on board Crew 9. (A normal crew is four) This mission has a nominal launch date of August 18, but it could well be delayed. SpaceX has already identified flight suits that would fit Wilmore and Williams, allowing them to fly home on the Crew-8 spacecraft (presently docked to the space
