Space agency leaders are meeting on Saturday to decide whether astronauts who have been in limbo aboard the International Space Station for about 80 days because of problems with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft, might return to orbit.
Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, NASA astronauts, arrived at the space station on 6 June. If everything during the mission had gone perfectly, Starliner would have docked for only eight days. But this is Starliner’s test flight, the first with people on board, and no wonder there could be some challenges.
The agency is due to announce today whether it will deem Boeing’s Starliner safe enough to return home with the crew, or whether SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft will have to be used to save the day. NASA said it will release its decision after the review concludes on Saturday, as the press conference stands scheduled for 1 p.m. ET.
NASA said at the press briefing on 7 August that the space agency’s discussions about the safety of the Starliner capsule have reached a new level, prompting the federal agency to more seriously consider sending astronauts home on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which has flown about a dozen manned missions into space since 2020.
Engineers have spent weeks trying to better understand the problems, and Boeing said as early as 2 August that the likelihood of returning the spacecraft carrying astronauts Williams and Wilmore back to Earth remains high.
The problem is that five of Starliner’s 28 “jet control engines” failed during the first phase of Boeing’s test mission. All but one were eventually repaired. Although Williams and Wilmore had expected to spend only eight days in space, their stay aboard the orbiting laboratory had already extended by about two months as engineers on Earth worked to better understand the engine problems.
Therefore, what could end up happening is that if executives decide that Starliner is unfixable after all, the astronauts will fly on a spacecraft built by a competitor: SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, according to The New York Times.
In case NASA executives choose the SpaceX option, the two astronauts scheduled to launch on the next Crew Dragon mission will go away to make room for Ms Williams and Mr Wilmore on the return trip, and the two astronauts’ stay will extend for another six months, making them full members of the space station crew. They will return around February. Starliner will still return to Earth in September, but will fly autonomously, without the astronauts.
