Astronauts stuck onboard the ISS have return delayed again

Butch and Suni have had their return to Earth delayed by around eight months!

Two Nasa astronauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS) have had their return to Earth delayed again.

Barry 'Butch' Wilmore and Sunita Williams set off from Florida on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft on 5 June after multiple delays.

As part of their mission, they were only meant to stay in space for around a week, however their craft developed a number of issues including leaks - meaning they were unable to head back as planned.

Nasa were hoping they could bring back the astronauts in September, but then decided to delay the return until February due to safety concerns.

Now, the US space agency has said that the mission bringing the next crew of astronauts to the ISS has been delayed until "no earlier than late March 2025", meaning that would be the earliest that Butch and Suni would be able to use the craft to return back to Earth.

The latest delay to Butch and Suni's return is to give "Nasa and SpaceX teams time to complete processing on a new Dragon spacecraft for the mission".

Crew-9 - the current crew onboard the ISS - includes Butch, Suni, fellow Nasa astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.

They can only leave the ISS after a special "handover period" has taken place with the new Crew-10, "to share any lessons learned with the newly arrived crew and support a better transition for ongoing science and maintenance at the complex".

Nasa hasn't shared how long that handover might take.