Astronauts Getting Stuck In Space Is More Common Than You Think

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Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore are among a long list of astronauts who got to spend more time on the ISS than expected.

Thanks to technical problems with their Boeing Starliner spacecraft, Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore are spending a lot more time on the International Space Station than originally planned. But these astronauts are not the first spacefarers to get "stranded" in space, and they probably won't be the last.

Dealing with such difficulties is an essential task for an astronaut—and Williams and Wilmore might be secretly pleased with the situation.

"Astronauts consider themselves 'stranded' on Earth, so this is a huge gift," says Chris Hadfield , a former NASA astronaut, space shuttle pilot and long-term crew commander on the ISS. "It's the purpose of our profession."

Williams and Wilmore were scheduled to spend eight days on the ISS, after arriving there on the Starliner's first flight in June.

But even before the launch and during the journey to the ISS, Starliner was plagued by leaks of the helium gas used to push fuel into its thrusters—and so the two astronauts have now spent more than two months on the space station while NASA and Boeing tried to work through the problems.

That means the two astronauts are likely to stay on the ISS until February 2025—roughly eight months after they arrived—when a Dragon capsule is next scheduled to return to Earth.