NASA's two wandering astronauts will have until February 2025 to return

[New Sancai Compilation First Edition] The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) decided on August 24 that the two astronauts who were in trouble aboard Boeing's "Starliner" spacecraft were too risky to return to Earth on the original spacecraft. Big, they will have to wait until 2025 to join other astronauts on a SpaceX spacecraft home. The two astronauts were only supposed to be on a one-week test flight, but now they need to stay on the space station for more than eight months.

The two experienced pilots have been stuck on the International Space Station since early June. A series of vexing thruster failures and a helium leak in Starliner derailed their trip to the space station, ultimately putting them on hold while engineers conducted tests and debated how to handle return.

Nearly three months later, NASA’s top leadership finally made this decision on August 24. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will return aboard a SpaceX spacecraft in February 2025. Their original "Starliner" spacecraft will undock within a week or two and attempt to return automatically.

As test pilots of the Starliner spacecraft, the pair were supposed to oversee the final critical leg of the journey, landing in the American desert.

It's a blow to Boeing, exacerbating safety issues plaguing the company's planes. Boeing had looked to the Starliner spacecraft's first crewed trip to revive the troubled program after years of delays and ballooning costs. The company insists that Starliner is safe based on all recent thruster testing in space and on the ground.

Wilmore, 61, and Williams, 58, two retired Navy captains with long-term space flight experience, expected surprises when they accepted the new spacecraft's test cruise, but nothing to this extent.

Ahead of the June 5 launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, they said their families came to terms with the uncertainty and stress of their careers decades ago. At its only orbital press conference last month, they expressed confidence in the thruster testing underway. They added that they had no complaints and enjoyed working on the space station.

Wilmore's wife, Deanna, was similarly stoic during a television interview earlier this month in their hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee. She is already prepared to postpone it to February 2025: "You just have to let nature take its course."

almost no choice

The SpaceX spacecraft currently parked at the space station is reserved for the four astronauts who have been there since March. They will return in late September, their stay extended by a month due to Starliner's woes. NASA, unless it's an emergency, it's not safe to squeeze two more people into a SpaceX spacecraft.

The docked Russian Soyuz spacecraft is more compact and can carry only three people - two Russians who are about to complete a year-long flight.

So Wilmore and Williams will wait for SpaceX's next flight. It will launch in late September, carrying two astronauts instead of the usual four for a routine six-month stay. NASA removed two of them from the return flight in late February to make room for Wilmore and Williams.

NASA said it was not seriously considering asking SpaceX to conduct a rapid independent rescue. In 2023, Roscosmos had to urgently deliver a replacement Soyuz spacecraft to three original ships damaged by space debris. The shift delayed their mission by a year, an American space endurance record still held by Frank Rubio.

The Dilemma of "Starliner"

In 2019, poor software delayed the first test flight without a crew until 2022. The leak was ultimately deemed isolated and initially too small to cause concern. But more leaks emerged after liftoff and five thrusters failed.

With the Columbia disaster still fresh in the minds of many - the 2003 space shuttle disintegrated upon re-entry, killing all seven people on board - NASA has launched a public debate over Starliner's return capabilities. Like the 1986 Challenger flight, dissent was silenced on Columbia's doomed flight.

Despite Saturday's decision, NASA isn't giving up on Boeing.

NASA launched the Commercial Crew Program a decade ago, hoping two competing U.S. companies would deliver astronauts in a post-Space Shuttle era. Boeing won the bigger contract: more than $4 billion, while SpaceX's contract was worth $2.6 billion.

With supplies to the space station already under control, SpaceX had its first of nine astronaut flights in 2020, while Boeing was mired in design flaws that cost the company more than $1 billion. NASA officials remain hopeful that Starliner's problems can be corrected in time for another crewed flight in a year or so.

(Compiled by: Wang Jimin)

(Editor: Jiang Qiming)

(Source of the article: Compiled and published by New Sancai)