Two NASA astronauts who have been stranded in space since early June have finally booked flights home. They’ll return to Earth aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft in February.
The decision is a vote of confidence for Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Not only did the company win the astronaut transportation race with a years-long lead, it was also entrusted with finishing the job that Boeing started. The two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, launched on June 5 on a mission that was never going to be a smooth one. They were the first passengers to board the Starliner, built by veteran contractor Boeing. Their mission would turn out to be more complicated than originally planned and would take months longer than anyone expected.
“Space flight involves risks even in the safest and most routine cases,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at a news conference Saturday. “Test flights are inherently neither safe nor routine.”
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Wilmore and Williams faced several delays before launch. They finally launched and arrived safely at the International Space Station. However, there were some minor anomalies during the flight, notably a helium leak and a failed thruster in the propulsion system. Since the pair reached orbit, NASA and Boeing have been busy troubleshooting the spacecraft, which they’ve nicknamed “Wilmore.” Calypso.
NASA Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams;
But NASA remains unsatisfied that engineers understand the thruster situation well enough to entrust NASA astronauts to the spacecraft. Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, said at a press conference that every NASA team surveyed about Starliner’s return — 12 departments in all — chose to fly uncrewed. “There was just too much uncertainty in the thruster predictions,” added Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
For NASA, the decision marks a setback to its plans to have two reliable spacecraft that can regularly ferry astronauts into space. But despite the seeming awkwardness of the new arrangement, changing Wilmore and Williams’ return vehicle is preferable to the alternatives, said Wendy Whitman Cobb, a political scientist at the School of Advanced Aeronautics and Astronautics.
“The consequences could have been much worse if they had made the decision to put the lives of the astronauts at risk,” Whitman Cobb said. “I think this is probably the least risky option for NASA at this point.”
The review shows how much confidence NASA has in SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. In addition to relying on Musk’s company to access the International Space Station, NASA is also trusting SpaceX to launch high-profile science missions as well as land astronauts on the moon and even build a ship to destroy the space station in orbit.
For Boeing, NASA’s decision will likely hurt both the company’s reputation and its balance sheet. “This will certainly be a big blow to Boeing,” Whitman Cobb said. “Their financial statements already show that they’ve taken a significant financial hit. This will be another blow.”
But Nelson and other NASA officials stressed that NASA and Boeing remain committed to making Starliner a routine, operational spacecraft for the space station. NASA has long stressed the importance of having two U.S.-made spacecraft capable of reaching the orbital laboratory in case one of the craft has problems and has to stay grounded temporarily. Asked how confident he was that Starliner would fly with crew again, Nelson said, “100 percent.”
Boeing representatives did not attend NASA’s press conference on Saturday, but the company released a statement saying, “Our focus remains first and foremost on the safety of our crew and spacecraft. We are executing the mission as determined by NASA and are preparing the spacecraft for a safe and successful uncrewed return.”
NASA is accustomed to prioritizing the lives of astronauts in its decision-making, and officials regularly talk about how significant the impact of spacecraft accidents is. Challenger The 1986 Space Shuttle Columbia The 2003 space shuttle disasters shaped NASA’s “safety culture.” At a press conference Saturday, Nelson noted the missing shuttle crews and how those accidents changed the agency’s culture. But because both shuttles were fully operated by NASA, some experts have long worried that the dawn of commercial missions would disrupt space safety standards.
The Road to Earth
As things stand, Starliner will return empty within a few weeks, with Wilmore and Williams expected to remain in orbit for another six months — a dramatic change in their work schedules. The pair will prepare the Boeing spacecraft for departure and say goodbye in early September. The empty capsule will fly through Earth’s atmosphere and land in the Utah desert. (The Crew 8 Dragon spacecraft, currently docked at the space station, will be temporarily converted to a six-seater in case of an emergency that requires astronauts to be evacuated, NASA officials said.)
And about a month from now, SpaceX will launch its planned Crew 9 mission, which will feature only two of the four previously assigned crew members: NASA astronauts Zena Cardman, Nick Hague, and Stephanie Wilson, and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov. NASA has not yet decided who will remain on the flight, according to Norman Knight, director of flight operations.
Wilmore, Williams and their two new companions will remain in orbit for the standard six months, conducting a variety of science experiments, before heading to Earth in early 2025. (NASA has also confirmed that the pair will be training for spacewalks during their extended stay.)
A decade of hardship
Starliner’s uncrewed return marks the latest chapter in a decade-long series of challenges for Boeing. In 2014, NASA hired both Boeing and SpaceX to develop a vehicle to transport astronauts to the International Space Station. NASA retired its shuttle fleet in 2011, just 10 years after continuously occupying the ISS, putting it in the awkward position of having to rely on Russia to ferry it to and from the station.
Contracts with these private operators called for launching astronauts by 2017, but neither company met that deadline. SpaceX built on past success with its Dragon capsule in flying resupply missions to orbital outposts by conducting a successful crewed test mission in 2020. Since then, SpaceX has completed seven standard crewed missions for NASA, with an eighth mission currently in orbit and scheduled for return next month.
Meanwhile, Boeing is building its Starliner spacecraft from scratch, a decade-long effort that has been rocky: The company was finally ready to launch uncrewed test flights in December 2019. But the spacecraft, the same capsule currently in orbit, burned too much fuel minutes after launch and was unable to reach the International Space Station.
After the disaster, Starliner remained grounded for two and a half years (due in part to 12 failed valves), before completing a successful uncrewed test flight in May 2022. But that mission wasn’t perfect either, with thruster issues marring a flight to the space station, and last summer Boeing lost another year due to problems with parachutes and the discovery that a highly flammable type of tape had been used throughout the capsule.
In early May, Starliner was headed to the launch pad for a crucial crewed test flight, the final milestone before Boeing launches scheduled flights to the International Space Station. But the mission team aborted the launch due to a valve problem, forcing a month-long hiatus before the next attempt. That attempt, too, was halted four minutes into the flight due to a helium leak from the propulsion system.
Wilmore and Williams boarded the Starliner more than 100 feet above the launch pad on June 5 for their second visit to the space station in less than a week — the third visit of both astronauts’ careers. But on the journey to orbit, the propulsion system suffered two more helium leaks, five of the craft’s thrusters failed, and the capsule’s cooling system was using up large amounts of water.
Although each problem wasn’t particularly problematic on its own, their combination had a major impact. Within days of Wilmore and Williams going into orbit, NASA began postponing their return flight. By mid-June, NASA officials were considering keeping the pair in orbit while engineers gathered as much data as possible about the parts of the craft that would burn up on re-entry—not out of concern for the craft’s safety, but to better understand future missions.
Flight resumed
The path to getting Starliner flying again has yet to be determined. Boeing representatives were not at Saturday’s press conference, but Nelson said he had spoken earlier in the day with Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, who has been in the job for just over two weeks. “He has expressed to me our intention to continue working to resolve the issue once Starliner returns safely,” Nelson said.
But questions remain. NASA officials declined to say whether they intend to certify Starliner for regular crewed missions without bringing back Wilmore and Williams, or whether they would consider sending all four astronauts on the next crewed flight. It’s also unclear what NASA’s international partners on the space station, particularly Russia, might need to see before entrusting their astronauts to the new spacecraft.
All of these considerations will become clearer when Starliner returns to Earth and is in NASA’s hands in a few weeks, and Boeing engineers evaluate its path forward. Whitman-Cobb says a key factor in determining the spacecraft’s future will be whether either organization requests changes to be made to Starliner. “Any time we have to make changes to the capsule or to the systems, that’s probably going to take quite a bit of time,” she says.
