Boeing astronauts who have been stranded in space since June 5, might end up having to wait until February 2025 before they can be brought back home. Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams were the first two pilots to fly the Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station to answer concerns about the vehicle’s flight readiness. The original mission was only supposed to be for eight days. Now it could be eight months.
According to Semafor, NASA is considering saving them a pair of seats on a SpaceX flight to the space station that is scheduled for Feb. 2025, according to agency officials on Wednesday. The craft the two astronauts piloted cost billions to build and it suffered through a number of production delays. Many of the issues that have arisen with the Starliner have led to SpaceX taking over the space tourism industry and has decreased the credibility Boeing previously enjoyed with NASA, which has been a client of the company ever since the Apollo moon landings.
Boeing recently revealed it incurred a $125 million loss related to Starliner when the company reported its quarterly earnings for the three months ending in June. The company maintains Starliner is safe and could still carry the astronauts home. If it completes its test flight successfully, then the company can fulfill a 2014 contract to launch several more crewed flights for NASA to the ISS before the orbiting lab is decommissioned in 2030. If not, the only other flight-ready capsule NASA has a contract with is SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.
Here’s more from The Guardian:
A Boeing spokesperson said if Nasa decides to change Starliner’s mission, the company “will take the actions necessary to configure Starliner for an uncrewed return.” Using a SpaceX craft to return astronauts that Boeing had planned to bring back on Starliner would be a major blow to an aerospace giant that has struggled for years to compete with SpaceX and its more experienced Crew Dragon.
Starliner has been docked to the ISS for 63 of the maximum 90 days it can stay, and it is parked at the same port that Crew Dragon will have to use to deliver the upcoming astronaut crew. The SpaceX Crew-9 launch was initially scheduled for mid-August. Nasa now says the mission will launch after 24 September. Boeing said in July that after rigorous ground tests, engineers pinpointed issues within the Starliner, including the abrupt malfunction of thrusters and helium leaks.
There have also been a ton of rumors floating around that major conflict is happening behind the curtains between the leaders of NASA and Boeing. Agency head honchos are now questioning if Starliner should bring the two astronauts back. A meeting that took place earlier this week of the Commercial Crew Program with NASA concluded with some of thsoe in attendance not coming to an agreement on whether to accept the testing data presented by Boeing and utilize Starliner to bring the pair of pilots home.
“We didn’t poll in a way that led to a conclusion,” Commercial Crew Program chief Steve Stich commented on the meeting.
“We heard from a lot of folks that had concerns, and the decision was not clear,” Ken Bowersox, Nasa’s space operations chief also said.
Boeing has been through a rough time with all of the malfunctions of its planes and other aircraft in recent years. During the last press conference the company had concerning the Starliner, the manager of Boeing’s commercial crew program, Mark Nappi, stated that he deeply regrets being “emphatic” about how this mission would only be for a period of 8 days.
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The Guardian concluded their report by saying that the testing completed thus far by Boeing has shown that four of the jets on the Starliner failed back in June due to overheating, which led to them shutting down automatically, while other thrusters re-fired during tests seemed to be a bit weaker than normal due to the restriction to their propellant.