Published 3 February 2024 at 17.00
Domestic. Due to adverse weather conditions off the coast of Florida, SpaceX is now aiming to return home for the Ax-3 crew no earlier than Monday, February 5th. This means that the Swedish astronaut Marcus Wandt will remain on the space station for a couple of extra days.
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The place of the landing is the sea off the east coast of Florida and it is the weather in the area that now causes it. It is important that the sea is calm enough and visibility is good to be able to pick up the crew with the boats as safely as possible.
Now SpaceX, which is responsible for the trip, has made the assessment that the weather is too bad and that the astronauts will therefore have to spend a little more time on the space station.
Marcus Wandt shares the capsule and the Ax-3 mission with Walter Villadei from Italy, Alper Gezeravci from Turkey and Michael López-Alegría, an American-Spanish former this Nasa astronaut.
The plans now are to try to find a gap in the weather and bring the crew home by Monday at the latest.
There is no risk to the astronauts in keeping the crew on the space station . Earlier this week, a large shipment of supplies also arrived.
Marcus Wandt and the others have completed the planned work on the various research projects and, according to ESA's research coordinator, had the entire Saturday off. If the journey home is delayed more than Monday, it may happen that you choose to unpack some of the research again and take advantage of the extra time in weightlessness, but even without research there is always a lot of maintenance to do with a space station that has orbited the Earth for over 23 years.
On Friday, a farewell ceremony with the entire crew of the space station was broadcast: