NASA confirms astronauts trapped on the Space Station will return in February on Elon Musk’s ship

NASA has finally decided that astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who are currently ‘trapped’ on the International Space Station (ISS), will not return on the Starliner, the ship in which they arrived and which they were testing for the first time with a crew. This was announced by the US space agency at a press conference in which there was no representative of Boeing, the company that has designed, built and operated the vehicle whose objective is to become the new ‘taxi’ for American astronauts to the ISS. Without a doubt, this is a blow for the aerospace company, which has already been years behind schedule with the Starliner, which will return home in September, albeit empty.

According to Jim Free, NASA associate administrator, the problems with the thrusters involve “physical processes that the team does not yet fully understand” and which provide a high threshold of uncertainty in how they will behave in flight, which is why the space agency has chosen not to use the Staliner for their return and to extend the mission of Wilmore and Williams: from a one-week mission to eight months in space. To return, they will use a Crew Dragon, the SpaceX ship – a company captained by the always controversial Elon Musk -, joining the Crew-9 mission, which has already suffered the consequences of Boeing’s failed test: it has had to be delayed by a month and, now, will also see its crew reduced from four to two astronauts, to make room on the ship for Williams and Wilmore.

“Spaceflight is risky, even in its safest and most routine forms. A test flight, by its nature, is neither safe nor routine,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “The decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring Boeing’s Starliner home uncrewed is a result of our commitment to safety – our core value.”

For his part, Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, said that making the decision “was not easy,” although he praised the work of Boeing and NASA during the last two months in which the ship has been docked at the ISS. “We have learned a lot about the spacecraft during its trip to the station and its docked operations. We will also continue to collect more data on Starliner during the uncrewed return and improve the system for future flights to the space station.”

More Read

They were willing to pay $2,800 for the new phone, but they ran out

A space rock is about to become Earth’s new “mini-moon”

model with more buttons and designed for Apple Intelligence, but still without AI

Despite all this, NASA officials have assured that the agency still has confidence in Boeing and Starliner, and that the team is committed to continuing to do more tests once the ship returns to Earth, which will occur in September – the deadline for launching the Crew-9 mission is September 24.

“Starliner is a very capable spacecraft, and ultimately this comes down to the need for a higher level of certainty in performing a crewed return,” said Steve Stich, NASA Commercial Crew Program manager. “The NASA and Boeing teams have completed a tremendous amount of testing and analysis, and this flight test is providing critical information about Starliner’s performance in space. Our efforts will help prepare for an uncrewed return and greatly benefit future corrective actions for the spacecraft.”

A complicated path

Starliner’s path has been rocky from the start: after years of delays and two uncrewed missions (one in 2019 when it got lost on the way to the ISS and another in 2022 when it had problems on reentry), it finally launched on June 5. During the journey, the ship experienced several helium leaks. But the most worrying thing was the failure of several thrusters, which led the crew to abandon the first attempt to dock at the space station.

From there, a whole series of tests began, both on the ship docked to the ISS and with a replica of the thrusters at NASA’s White Sands facility in New Mexico, to find out what had happened. Although Boeing was quite optimistic after the first tests – they even issued a statement pointing to August as the month of return – the US space agency was always more cautious.

NASA’s multimillion-dollar investment

Starliner has been a significant expense for NASA. In early 2010, the US space agency invested $18 million (€16.5 million) in Boeing for the preliminary development of a future spacecraft to transport American astronauts to the ISS and to stop depending on the Russian Soyuz, the only ones that at that time had the capacity to send crews to the orbital laboratory. During a second phase, NASA financed the same project with another $93 million (€85 million). In 2012, a new contract worth $460 million (€423 million) was announced.

The investment did not end there. In 2014, the space agency selected the CST-100 vehicle – at that time not yet christened Starliner – as the main beneficiary of the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) programme, receiving 4.2 billion dollars (just over 3.9 billion euros). The amount was double what the agency awarded to SpaceX, the second winner of the contract, which received 2.6 billion dollars (2.4 billion euros).

While Boeing’s reputation and experience seemed to carry more weight at first, the successes of Elon Musk’s company after successfully launching the first reusable Falcon rockets and the Crew Dragon spacecraft have completely changed the scenario. Now, SpaceX is NASA’s main contractor, which relies on its vehicles even to go beyond the ISS (the Starship mega-rocket is the one chosen to return to the Moon with the Artemis Program, for example, although it is also being proposed as the transport of the first humans to Mars). This new setback by Boeing reinforces Musk’s power in space. At least, his alliance with the American space agency.

Keynote USA

For the Latest News, Follow KeynoteUSA on Twitter Or Google News.