The Boeing Starliner astronauts who are stuck in space will remain in orbit until February before returning home on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, NASA said Saturday.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams traveled to space on June 5 — 80 days ago — for what was supposed to be around a weeklong mission. More than two months later, the astronauts are aboard the International Space Station awaiting a return date to Earth. The reason for the delay, NASA said, is helium leaks and thruster issues in the Starliner.
NASA previously insisted that Wilmore and Williams are not stranded in space and said the Starliner could return to Earth in case of an emergency. “Their spacecraft is working well, and they’re enjoying their time on the space station,” Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, said in June.
But on Saturday, NASA announced that Wilmore and Williams will depart with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft as part of the space organization’s “commitment to safety.” The Starliner will return to Earth unpiloted and could land in New Mexico as early as Sept. 6.
Why did NASA come to this decision?
NASA had two options to bring the astronauts home. The first option was to send them back on Boeing’s Starliner, which would mean NASA had found it safe to deliver Wilmore and Williams safely back to Earth.
However, there was a second option, which NASA ultimately decided to go with: send the astronauts back home via SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which will depart from the station in February 2025. Crew Dragon is expected to launch on Sept. 24 as part of a routine astronaut rotation mission, and it will have two seats available for Wilmore and Williams to use. This means that their time in space will be stretched from the planned eight or so days to more than nine months.
Ultimately, NASA couldn’t be certain that the Boeing spacecraft was safe enough to bring the astronauts home.
“Space flight is risky, even at its safest and even at its most routine, and a test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at Saturday’s press conference. “The decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is a result of a commitment to safety. Our core value is safety, and it is our North Star, and I’m grateful to NASA and to Boeing for their teams, for all the incredible and detailed work to get to this decision.”
NASA has the right to be cautious, since accidents have occurred in the past — something that NASA alluded to during the Saturday press conference. Three major disasters — the Apollo 1 fire in 1967, the Challenger explosion in 1986 and the Columbia disintegration in 2003 — have led to the deaths of 17 astronauts.
