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NASA moves up Crew-10 mission

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Starliner astronauts to come home slightly earlier than

planned

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SpaceX capsule shuffle affects company's private missions

(Adds details on NASA's decision and its impact, background

from paragraph 5-14)

By Joey Roulette

WASHINGTON, Feb 11 (Reuters) - NASA on Tuesday swapped

out the astronaut capsule it plans to use for an upcoming

routine flight to the International Space Station, a scheduling

move that will allow a slightly earlier return for two Starliner

astronauts who have been on the station far longer than

expected.

The U.S. space agency said mission management teams opted to

use a previously flown SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule for its

Crew-10 mission to the space station, instead of a new SpaceX

capsule whose production it said has been delayed.

The decision moves up the Crew-10 launch to March 12, from

the previous target of March 25. NASA said it would still need

to do a flight readiness assessment of the previously flown Crew

Dragon capsule, which is named Endeavor and has been used on

three previous missions.

The return of two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni

Williams, who flew to the International Space Station on

Boeing's ( BA ) faulty Starliner capsule last summer, has hinged

on the arrival of the Crew-10's four-person crew in order to

keep the station's American contingent staffed at normal levels.

The decision follows President Donald Trump's abrupt demand

to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk last month to bring Wilmore and Williams

back to Earth "as soon as possible," pleading for an end to

their mission that in large part had already been decided on

last year.

After Trump's demand, NASA affirmed its plan to bring home

the astronauts, saying it would do so "as soon as practical." In

its statement on Tuesday, the agency did not say its decision to

change the Crew-10 capsule was made to bring the Starliner crew

home early.

"Human spaceflight is full of unexpected challenges," NASA's

Commercial Crew Program head Steve Stich said in a statement,

praising SpaceX for its flexibility.

Trump's call was an unusual intervention by a president into

NASA's meticulously arranged ISS schedule and foisted Wilmore

and Williams into an unlikely political spotlight.

Trump had blamed his predecessor Joe Biden for the

astronaut's situation, though Biden had no involvement in the

program. Musk, publicly accepting Trump's demand, also blamed

Biden despite his space company's work with NASA to solve a

spaceflight dilemma widely acknowledged to be caused by Boeing ( BA ).

The spacecraft swap affects SpaceX's planned Fram2 private

astronaut mission, which was expected to use the Endeavor

capsule sometime this year for a polar-orbiting mission.

"We've lost the South Pole in the daylight," the mission's

commander, Maltese crypto entrepreneur Chun Wang, wrote on X

with a sad face emoji, replying to rumors about the Crew-10

decision. The mission will use a different Crew Dragon in

SpaceX's fleet.

The Crew-10 decision is also expected to impact Axiom's

planned Crew Dragon mission where it will fly government

astronauts from India, Poland, and Hungary. Houston-based Axiom,

which arranges private and government astronaut missions using

Crew Dragon, did not immediately return a request for comment.

SpaceX developed its Crew Dragon capsule with roughly $3

billion in funding from NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which

aims to entrust companies with spaceflight with the hopes of

stimulating a private market and bringing costs down.

Boeing's ( BA ) Starliner, which flew back to Earth in September

without Wilmore and Williams, has been developed under the same

NASA program, but has struggled with engineering flaws.