Blitz Bureau
NASA last week decided that it’s too risky to bring two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, back to Earth in Boeing’s troubled new capsule, and they’ll have to wait until next year for a ride home with SpaceX, according to a report by AP.
What should have been a weeklong test flight for the pair will now last more than eight months.
Technical problems
The seasoned pilots have been stuck at the International Space Station since the beginning of June. A cascade of vexing thruster failures and helium leaks in the new capsule marred their trip to the space station, and they ended up in a holding pattern as engineers conducted tests and debated what to do about the trip back.
After almost three months, the decision finally came down from NASA’s highest ranks on August 24, 2024. Wilmore and Williams will come back in a SpaceX spacecraft in February. Their empty Starliner capsule will undock in early September and attempt to return on autopilot.
As Starliner’s test pilots, the pair should have overseen this critical last leg of the journey, with touchdown in the U.S. desert. “A test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine,” said NASA Administration Bill Nelson. “And so the decision… is a commitment to safety.” “This has not been an easy decision, but it is absolutely the right one,” added NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free. Retired Navy captains with previous long-duration spaceflight experience, Wilmore, 61, and Williams, 58, anticipated surprises when they accepted the shakedown cruise of a new spacecraft, although not quite to this extent.
The SpaceX capsule currently parked at the space station is reserved for the four residents who have been there since March. They will return in late September, their stay extended a month by the Starliner dilemma. NASA said it would be unsafe to squeeze two more into the capsule, except in an emergency. The docked Russian Soyuz capsule is even tighter, capable of flying only three — two of them Russians wrapping up a yearlong stint.
