It took two months of intense testing and discussions, but the decision was made. NASA said astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will return home in February 2025 aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, and the Boeing Starliner they flew to the International Space Station will return in June without a crew.
In a press conference yesterday, Steve Stich, director of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, revealed that "there was a lot of uncertainty" surrounding the predictions for Starliner's thrusters to move forward on a crewed return flight.
The specific plan is for the first Starliner crew to return with SpaceX’s Crew-9, which is scheduled to launch to the International Space Station in late September. Crew-9 was originally supposed to carry four crew members, but instead will have to go ahead with two, to make room for Wilmore and Williams to return.
The spacecraft is being reconfigured with seats for the astronauts, and Dragon spacesuits will be added to its payload to bring them home. By the time Wilmore and Williams depart, the pair will have been on the space station for about eight months. The Starliner test flight was expected to last just over a week.
The next step is to prepare Starliner for unmanned flight testing. The agency plans to complete the second part of its readiness review next week, and expects to undocking early next month.
The Starliner engine problem was “very complex,” Stich revealed, and its performance was “difficult to predict.” Without the ability to accurately know how the thrusters would perform from separation to burn-out in orbit, the potential risks to astronauts were very high, he explained.
Spaceflight is risky, even in its safest, most routine forms, and a test flight is by its very nature neither safe nor routine. So the decision to keep Butch and Sonny on the ISS and bring the Boeing Starliner home unmanned is “a result of a commitment to safety.”
