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NASA’s 2 stuck astronauts may return sooner than expected

That will shave at least a couple weeks off their prolonged stay at the International Space Station, which hit the eight-month mark last week

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Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore at the ISS. Pic/AP

Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore at the ISS. Pic/AP

NASA’s two stuck astronauts may end up back on Earth a little sooner than planned. The space agency announced that SpaceX will switch capsules for upcoming astronaut flights in order to bring Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams home in mid-March instead of late March or April. That will shave at least a couple weeks off their prolonged stay at the International Space Station, which hit the eight-month mark last week.

“Human spaceflight is full of unexpected challenges,” NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich said in a statement. The test pilots should have returned in June on Boeing’s Starliner capsule after what should have been a weeklong flight demo. But the capsule had so much trouble getting to the space station that NASA decided to bring it back empty and reassigned the pair to SpaceX.

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