According to Roscosmos, the undocking of the Crew-8 capsule of the Crew Dragon rocket from the ISS has been postponed again "due to unfavorable weather in the landing areas near the coast of Florida". Hurricane Milton has already caused the date of its landing to be changed twice.
Currently, the international Crew-8 mission — Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin and NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps — remains on the ISS indefinitely, according to NASA. The new date for the undocking of the Crew Dragon capsule from the ISS is not even mentioned approximately.
These are not the only ones awaiting space evacuation from the ISS. Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams have been there for almost five months. They arrived at the ISS on June 5, testing the new Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, and were supposed to leave the ISS after eight days of testing this space shuttle. But neither on June 18, nor later, were they able to return to Earth. During the flight and after docking to the ISS, the Boeing CST-100 Starliner encountered problems that would not have allowed the astronauts to reach Earth alive.
At NASA, in order to pull Wilmore and Williams from the ISS, they decided to turn to SpaceX, which was preparing to launch the Crew-9 mission of four people in September with the participation of Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov as part of the cross-flight program. They agreed to help and reduced the number of mission participants to two: Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov and NASA astronaut Nick Hague. They flew to the ISS on September 29 and will return to Earth in February 2025 together with Wilmore and Williams.
It is worth noting that in 2024, as part of cross-flights, Russia returned two American astronauts to Earth. All undockings from the ISS and landings took place as normal and on schedule.
Thus, in June, the Soyuz MS-24 returned to Earth with an international space crew on board. Together with Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky and the first Belarusian cosmonaut Marina Vasilevskaya, NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara landed. And in September, as part of the cross-flight agreement, the Soyuz MS-25 with NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub landed in Kazakhstan in the area of the city of Zhezkazgan.
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