SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft will bring astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore home from the International Space Station in February 2025, NASA said Saturday.
The agency’s decision marks the latest setback for Boeing’s costly and long-delayed Starliner program, which would extend the astronauts’ scheduled eight-day journey to a total of eight months at the International Space Station.
Since Boeing first signed a $4.3 billion contract with NASA in 2014, work on the Starliner has been more than $1.5 billion over budget, starting with a failed first test flight and continuing with a series of subsequent problems, including parachute failures, Burn protective tape, rust, etc.
Starliner’s first crewed test flight launched on June 5 from the Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Two more leaks were discovered while docked at the International Space Station. Since then, NASA and Boeing have been evaluating whether the spacecraft is safe enough to bring passengers Williams and Wilmore back to Earth. At the time, there were rumors that the astronauts could be stuck there for up to six months.
NASA said the Boeing Starliner is still docked at the International Space Station. Although Boeing said the Starliner will be able to bring Williams and Wilmore safely back to Earth, the Boeing Starliner will eventually fly unmanned. return to Earth.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told the media on Saturday that “space flight is risky, even under the safest and most routine circumstances. By its nature, test flights are neither safe nor routine.” Nelson said the U.S. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) called on astronauts to stay on the International Space Station for a few more months and bring unmanned Starliner back to Earth in September, “as a result of its commitment to safety.”
Williams and Wilmore will return via SpaceX’s months-long Crew-9 mission, which was originally scheduled to launch with four astronauts in August but will now carry only two as soon as September 24 The astronauts take off.
Upon return, Starliner astronauts may have no choice but to set foot on Earth wearing SpaceX suits. “From a spacesuit perspective, they’re really not interchangeable,” Joel Montalbano, NASA’s deputy associate administrator, said earlier this month. “You can’t wear a Boeing suit in SpaceX [craft]or a SpaceX suit in a Boeing vehicle. So that’s not going to be the plan,” he added.
