With even more work still anticipated for the new capsule, NASA opted for its next crew to fly up on an older capsule, with liftoff now targeted for March 12.
The private flight arranged by the Houston company Axiom Space, featuring astronauts from Poland, Hungary and India, was bumped and will launch later to the space station, possibly still this spring.
NASA prefers having a new crew arrive before sending the old one back, in this case Wilmore, Williams and two others up there since September.
But the capsule had so much trouble getting to the space station that NASA decided to bring it back empty and reassigned the pair to SpaceX.
The space agency announced Tuesday that SpaceX will switch capsules for upcoming astronaut flights in order to bring Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams home in mid-March instead of late March or April.
