Science|NASA Extends Boeing Starliner Astronauts’ Space Station Stay to 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/24/science/nasa-boeing-starliner-astronauts.html
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Persistent concerns with the vehicle’s propulsion systems mean Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will return home next year in a SpaceX vehicle.
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Boeing Starliner Astronauts Will Return to Earth in SpaceX Vehicle
NASA announced that two astronauts aboard the International Space Station will have their stay extended by several months and that they will return on a SpaceX capsule because of problems with the Boeing Starliner.
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“NASA has decided that Butch and Suni will return with Crew 9 next February and that Starliner will return uncrewed. A test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine. And so the decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is the result of a commitment to safety.” “I talked with Butch and Suni both yesterday and today. They support the agency’s decision fully, and they’re ready to continue this mission on board I.S.S. as members of the Expedition 71 crew. Their families are doing well. Their families understand, just like the crew members when they launch, there’s always an opportunity, there’s always a possibility that they could be up there much longer than they anticipate. So the families understand that. I’m not saying it’s not hard. It is hard. It’s difficult.”
Two astronauts who have spent months aboard the International Space Station will have to stay there months longer after NASA decided on Saturday that they could not return on Boeing’s troubled Starliner space vehicle. They will return instead on a SpaceX capsule next year.
That decision finally brings clarity to the saga of the two NASA astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who docked at the space station as part of a test flight of the Boeing vehicle. It also adds to months of difficult problems experienced by Boeing, a dominant aerospace company that has faced embarrassing setbacks in its much larger civilian aviation and defense divisions this year.
“A test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine,” Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, said during a news conference, “and so 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.”
Norman Knight, the chief of NASA’s flight director office, said he had talked to Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore, and that they backed the extended stay in orbit, which officials have resisted describing as a stranding.
“They support the agency’s decision fully, and they’re ready to continue this mission onboard I.S.S.,” Mr. Knight said.
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