NASA cancels 2 astronauts from upcoming flight to give Starliner crew a ride home in February

NASA has reassigned two female astronauts, including the commander, from the next SpaceX crew rotation flight to the International Space Station, freeing up two seats so the agency’s Starliner astronauts can fly home next February.

Crew 9 commander Zena Cardman and veteran Stephanie Wilson will remain behind when the Crew Dragon ferry departs from Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Sept. 24, carrying crew member Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov.

Also on board: clothing, supplies and SpaceX pressure suits for Starliner commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams, whose originally scheduled eight-day test flight reached its 86th day on Friday. By the time they land aboard the Crew 9 capsule in February, they will have spent more than 262 days in space.

Hague, a Space Force colonel, former F-16 test pilot and combat veteran who spent 203 days in space on a previous mission, was originally assigned as Cardman’s co-pilot. He will now assume the role of mission commander, assisted by Gorbunov.

Gorbunov retained his seat aboard Crew 9 Dragon as part of an ongoing program in which Russian Soyuz spacecraft carry a NASA astronaut on each flight to the ISS and a cosmonaut is launched on each Crew Dragon.

That ensures that each country will always have at least one crew member aboard the lab, even if an emergency forces a ferry and its crew to return to Earth unscheduled. But Gorbunov is not trained to serve as a Crew Dragon pilot and will retain his original “mission specialist” designation.

The decision about who would fly on the Crew 9 mission and who would stay behind was made by NASA chief astronaut Joe Acaba. Although he did not explain his reasoning in a NASA statement announcing the decision, Hague’s spaceflight experience clearly made the difference.

“While we have changed crews before for various reasons, reducing the crew size for this flight was another difficult decision to get used to, as the crew is trained as a crew of four,” he said in a statement. “I have complete confidence in all of our crew members. … Zena and Stephanie will continue to assist their crew members prior to launch.”

In the same statement, Cardman said, “I have confidence that Nick and Alex will perform their roles with excellence. All four of us remain committed to the success of this mission, and Stephanie and I look forward to flying when the time is right.”

NASA had originally planned to launch Cardman, Hague, Wilson and Gorbunov earlier this month on a regular six-month mission, replacing three other astronauts and one cosmonaut (Crew 8) who were completing their own six-month stays aboard the space station.

But the Crew 9 flight was held up while NASA managers debated whether Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which launched June 5 in the ship’s first crewed test flight, could safely bring the two crew members home after multiple helium leaks and problems with its booster rocket occurred shortly after launch on June 5.

Playing it safe, agency managers decided on August 24 to keep Wilmore and Williams aboard the station for an extended period of time and to bring the Boeing spacecraft back to Earth remotely. That left Crew Dragon as the only ship capable of returning Wilmore and Williams to Earth.

The Starliner is expected to undock from the space station on September 6 and land unmanned at White Sands, New Mexico late at night.

The launch of Crew 9 is the first step in a complex series of flights to replace the space station’s seven permanent crew members with a new group of astronauts and cosmonauts.

The Russians plan to launch two cosmonauts, Alexei Ochinin and Ivan Vagner, along with NASA astronaut Donald Pettit, to the laboratory complex on Sept. 11. Cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub and NASA’s Tracy Dyson will then return to Earth on Sept. 23, the day before the two-man Crew 9 takes off.

Kononenko and Chub will complete a full year in space and will have been in the air for 374 days upon landing. Kononenko will also set a new record for the most time in space over multiple flights: 1,111 days.

The four Crew 8 pilots – Matthew Dominick, Mike Barratt, Jeanette Epps and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin – are expected to return home on Oct. 1 to complete the crew change.