by Boeing’s crew transport space capsule, the Starliner, returned to Earth without its crew of two just after midnight Eastern time on September 7, 2024. Its remotely piloted return was the end of a fraught test flight to the International Space Station which left two. the astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams, on the station for months longer than planned after thruster failures NASA considered that the capsule was unsafe to pilot back.
Wilmore and Williams will remain on the International Space Station until February 2025, when they will return to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon capsule.
The Conversation US asked former commander of the International Space Station Michael Fossum about NASA’s decision to bring back the unmanned craft, the future of the Starliner program and the long stay of a crew at the space station.
What does this decision mean for NASA?
NASA awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX in 2014 to provide crew transport vehicles to the International Space Station through the Commercial Crew Program. At the start of the program, most bets were on Boeing to take the lead, due to its extensive aerospace experience.
However, SpaceX moved very quickly with its new rocket, the Falcon 9, and its cargo ship, Dragon. Although they suffered some early failures during testing, they aggressively built, tested and learned from each failure. In 2020, SpaceX successfully launched its first test crew to the International Space Station.
Meanwhile, Boeing struggled through several development difficulties. The result of this first test flight is a huge disappointment for Boeing and NASA. But NASA leadership has shown its support for Boeing, and many experts, including myself, believe it is still in the agency’s best interest to have more than one American crewed launch system to support continued human space operations.
NASA is also continuing its exchange partnership with Russia. This partnership provides multiple ways for the agency to transport crew members to and from the space station.
As space station operations continue, NASA and its partners have enough options to get people to and from the station that they always have the necessary crew on the station – even if there is a launch outage one of the capable crewed vehicles. Starliner as an option will help with that redundancy.
What does this decision mean for Boeing?
I think Boeing’s reputation will suffer in the end. The company is moving forward with SpaceX. Now, the SpaceX Dragon crewed spacecraft has several flights under its belt. It has proven to be a reliable way to get to and from the space station.
It is important to remember that this was a test flight for Starliner. Of course, the program managers want every test flight to run perfectly, but you can’t predict every possible problem through a ground test. Unsurprisingly, some problems arose – you’d expect them in a test flight.
The space environment is unforgiving. A small problem can become catastrophic with zero gravity. It is difficult to replicate these situations on the ground.
The SpaceX and Boeing technology is also very different from the type of capsule technology used in the early days of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs.
NASA has evolved and taken strategic steps to advance its mission over the past two decades. The agency continued its legacy of thinking outside the box. It was an innovative move to break with tradition and leverage commercial competitors to promote the program. NASA gave the companies a set of requirements and left it up to them to figure out how to meet them.
What does this decision mean for the Starliner team?
I know Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams as rock-solid professionals, and I believe their first thoughts are to complete their mission safely. Both are very experienced astronauts with long experience on space stations. I am sure they are making progress.
Before joining NASA, Williams was a Navy aviator and Wilmore a combat soldier, so these two know how to face risk and accomplish their missions. This type of unfavorable outcome is always a possibility in a test mission. I am sure they are continuing with a positive attitude and using their bonus time in space to advance science, technology and space exploration.
Their families are more influential. They were happy to welcome the crew home in less than two weeks and now have to adjust to being separated unexpectedly for eight months.
Currently, NASA is dealing with a ripple effect, with more astronauts than expected on the space station. More people means more consumables – like food and clothes – are needed. The space station has previously supported a large crew for short periods, but with nine crew members on board today, the systems have to work harder to purify recycled drinking water, generate oxygen and remove carbon dioxide from their atmosphere .
Wilmore and Williams are also eating food, and they didn’t come with the clothing and other personal supplies they needed for an eight-month stay, so NASA has already begun ramping up those deliveries on cargo ships.
What does this decision mean for the future?
Human spaceflight is extremely hard and relentless. A million things have to go right to have a successful mission. It is impossible to fully understand the performance of systems in a microgravity environment until they are tested in space.
NASA has had many failures and near misses in the quest to put Americans on the Moon. They lost the Apollo 1 crew in a fire during pre-flight testing. They launched the first space shuttle in 1981, and have dealt with problems throughout that program’s 30-year lifespan, including the devastating losses of Challenger and Columbia.
After having no other options for over 30 years, the US now has three different human spacecraft programs underway. In addition to the SpaceX Crew Dragon and the Boeing Starliner, NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission is planned to fly four astronauts around the moon in the coming years.
These programs have had difficulties and bumps along the way – and there will be more – but I haven’t been excited about human spaceflight since I was 11 years old cheering on Apollo and dreaming of the first human footprints put on Mars. .
This article is republished from The Conversation, a non-profit, independent news organization that brings you reliable facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Michael E. Fossum, Texas A&M University
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Michael E. Fossum is a retired NASA astronaut. The people associated with NASA are his friends and colleagues.
