by NASA will ask SpaceX to bring home two astronauts who have been stuck on the International Space Station since early June after the Boeing spacecraft experienced some problems mid-flight, the agency said Saturday.
The decision by astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to return to Earth on the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, rather than on the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they rode into orbit, ends months of speculation and tension within the space agency over how — and when — both crew members could return safely. The mission was planned to last about eight days.
“Spaceflight is risky – even at its safest and most routine – and a test flight, by its very nature, is neither safe nor routine, hence the decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring home the Boeing Starliner. uncrewed is the result of a commitment to safety,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Saturday at a news briefing.
The Starliner drama has severely hampered Boeing’s space ambitions, adding to years of struggle to get the capsule off the ground and keep up with rival company SpaceX. Even before Wilmore and Williams launched in June, the Starliner program was more than $1.5 billion over budget and years behind schedule.
Top NASA officials, including Nelson, gathered Saturday at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for a formal review based on the results of tests conducted in orbit and on the ground.
While the agency has finally figured out how to bring the astronauts back, their return trip won’t be immediate. Instead, Wilmore and Williams will remain at the space station for about six more months before flying home in February.
NASA said it will drop two seats on SpaceX’s upcoming launch, called Crew-9, which will bring a new rotation of space station crews to the orbital outpost. By carrying two astronauts instead of the planned four, Wilmore and Williams will be able to fly back in the open seats at the end of the Crew-9 mission in February.
The Crew-9 flight is currently scheduled to take off on September 24 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Meanwhile, the beleaguered Starliner capsule will return to Earth unmanned, likely in early September, according to NASA.
Boeing said in a statement after the announcement: “We continue to focus, first and foremost, on the safety of the crew and the spacecraft. We are completing the mission as determined by NASA, and we are preparing the spacecraft for a safe and successful unmanned return.”
Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said that while Boeing officials have expressed confidence in their spacecraft, the decision to go with SpaceX was unanimous among NASA officials.
“There was too much uncertainty about predicting the storms,” Stich said. “If we had a model, [if] we had a way of accurately predicting what the chokes would do for the undock and all the way through the deorbit burn, through the separation sequence, I think we would have taken a different course of action.”
NASA’s uncertainty in recent weeks has been in stark contrast to the public messaging from Boeing. The aerospace company has said that tests carried out in orbit and on the ground showed that the Starliner capsule was safe to bring the astronauts home.
For the past month, Boeing officials have not participated in news briefings hosted by NASA to discuss the Starliner mission. Boeing had been publishing details about the flight’s status on the company’s website, but no mission updates had been posted since August 2. In that statement from earlier this month, Boeing said it “remains confident in the Starliner spacecraft and its ability to return safely with crew.”
Wilmore and Williams arrived at the space station on June 6. As they approached the orbital outpost, five of the Starliner’s thrusters malfunctioned, delaying the docking process by nearly an hour. Separately, mission managers also detected helium leaking from the capsule’s propulsion system – an issue known before the spacecraft’s launch but which appeared to worsen during the flight.
Engineers from NASA and Boeing spent weeks analyzing the problems using a test engine built for future Starliner flights. Mission managers also conducted two “hot fire tests” in space, which involved firing the capsule’s thrusters in short bursts while it was docked at the space station.
Wilmore and Williams launched to the International Space Station on June 5 on the first crewed flight of the Boeing Starliner capsule. The mission, meant to last just over a week, was a critical test flight for Boeing, serving as the last major step before NASA could certify the Starliner spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the space station on regular base.
It’s unclear how NASA will now proceed with the certification process, including how the space agency will assess Starliner’s performance on the crewed test flight.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has been transporting NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station since 2020.
Boeing and SpaceX developed their space capsules as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, an initiative that began in 2011 to support private companies building new space vehicles to take astronauts into low-Earth orbit after the agency’s space shuttles retire. .
Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator, praised the teams at NASA and Boeing and said the work done in the past few months will inform future missions.
“We are a learning organization,” he said. “We will learn from this effort so that our teams, who are at the top of the pyramid on these missions, and their families will be able to know that we have done that and that we will always do our best.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
