NASA bumps two astronauts from upcoming flight to give Starliner crew a ride home in February

NASA has bumped two female astronauts, including the commander, from the next SpaceX crew rotation flight to the International Space Station, freeing up two seats to give the agency’s Starliner astronauts a ride home next February.

Rookie Crew 9 commander Zena Cardman and veteran Stephanie Wilson will remain behind when the Crew Dragon ferry ship takes off from pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Sept. 24 carrying crewmate 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 planned eight-day test flight reached its 86th day on Friday. By the time they land aboard the Crew 9 capsule next February, they will have logged more than 262 days in space.

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

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

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

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

“While we’ve changed crew before for a variety of reasons, downsizing crew for this flight was another tough decision to adjust to given that the crew has trained as a crew of four,” he said in a statement. “I have the utmost confidence in all our crew. … Zena and Stephanie will continue to assist their crewmates ahead of launch.”

In the same statement, Cardman said: “I am confident Nick and Alex will step into their roles with excellence. All four of us remain dedicated to the success of this mission, and Stephanie and I look forward to flying when the time is right.”

NASA originally intended to launch Cardman, Hague, Wilson and Gorbunov earlier this month on a normal six-month tour of duty, replacing three other astronauts and a cosmonaut — Crew 8 — wrapping up their own half-year stay aboard the station.

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

Playing it safe, agency managers decided on Aug. 24 to keep Wilmore and Williams on board the station for an extended stay and to bring the Boeing spacecraft back to Earth by remote control. That left Crew Dragon as the only ship available to take Wilmore and Williams back to Earth.

The Starliner is now expected to undock from the space station on Sept. 6, setting up an uncrewed landing at White Sands, N.M., late that night.

The Crew 9 launch is the first step in a complex sequence of flights to replace the station’s seven long-duration crew members with a fresh set of astronauts and cosmonauts.

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

Kononenko and Chub are wrapping up a full year in orbit and will have logged 374 days aloft at touchdown. Kononenko also will set a new record for the most time in space across multiple flights: 1,111 days.

The four Crew 8 fliers — Matthew Dominick, Mike Barratt, Jeanette Epps and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin — are expected to head home on Oct. 1 to complete the crew rotation sequence.