2 Astronauts Dropped From SpaceX Crew-9 Mission To Make Room For Stranded Boeing Starliner Crew

SpaceX Crew-9 mission to the International Space Station(ISS) will now fly only two instead of four astronauts, to make room for the stranded Boeing Starliner CFT crew who will be hitching a ride in Crew-9 Dragon back to Earth in February. The Boeing spacecraft will be undocking from ISS empty, in September, to make room for Dragon on the station's Harmony module.

NASA announced on Friday, that U.S. Space Force commander Nick Hague, and Roscosmos astronaut and mission specialist Aleksandr Gorbunov will be flying in the Crew-9 mission to ISS, after the agency determined that CFT crewmembers Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are unable to return to Earth aboard Boeing Starliner as planned, due to helium leak and thruster issues. Original Crew-9 commander Zena Cardman and mission specialist Stephanie Wilson, a space shuttle astronaut, who were dropped, "are eligible for reassignment on a future mission," agency officials added in the statement.

The space agency generally fly space station missions with at least one U.S. military pilot aboard the spacecraft, hence the choice of Hague.

Crew-9 is Gorbunov's first flight. His seat is under a NASA arrangement with Roscosmos to fly one Russian space agency astronaut with each SpaceX mission. NASA receives seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft in return, for policy and backup reasons.

Hague, has been twice to space as a NASA astronaut with the U.S. Air Force. The first visit was brief because the Russian Soyuz spacecraft in which he flew with cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin on Oct. 11, 2018, aborted minutes after launch due to a rocket problem. It briefly reached space before returning to Earth with the crew unhurt. The crew successfully arrived at the ISS five months later in 2019 on their second try in Soyuz, during a 203-day-long mission.

With Crew-9, Hague who transferred to the Space Force in 2021, will be the first active Guardian to launch on a space mission.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket tasked to launch Crew Dragon later in September, was temporarily grounded following the loss of a different Falcon 9 variant that successfully launched a SpaceX Starlink satellite mission on Wednesday (Aug. 28). The first stage(Booster 1062) caught fire and tripped over after landing on a drone ship, breaking a streak of 267 successful Booster landings in a row.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as well as NASA and SpaceX, are investigating. FAA has since reportedly said the Elon Musk company's "Falcon 9 vehicle may return to flight operations while the overall investigation of the anomaly remains open. SpaceX made the return flight request on Aug. 29, and the FAA gave approval on Aug. 30," FAA said.

Starliner crew will be returning in February, after eight months in space instead of the scheduled 10 days. Crew-9 mission was delayed from an initial Aug. 18 launch to give NASA and Boeing time to investigate and make a decision.