NASA may ask SpaceX to repatriate stranded Boeing astronauts

 

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore made brief appearances during a press call from the space station.

NASA TV

NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore have been stuck on the International Space Station for nearly two months due to thruster problems and a helium leak on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.

It’s looking increasingly like SpaceX will have to step in and bring these astronauts home. The company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft has been successfully ferrying astronauts to and from the ISS for years.

“We have two different systems that we fly,” Steve Stich, head of NASA’s commercial crew program, said at a news conference Thursday. They are Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.

“Of course, the fallback option is to use another system,” Stich added. “I’d rather not get into all those details until we get to that point, if we ever get to that point.”

SpaceX sent astronauts into space much faster than Boeing

A Crew Dragon approaches the International Space Station with astronauts on board.

NASA

The Commercial Crew program funded SpaceX and Boeing to develop their respective spacecraft into reliable astronaut vehicles for NASA.

SpaceX has done things much faster and cheaper. Crew Dragon made its first astronaut flight in 2020. Starliner is making its first astronaut flight right now.

Elon Musk, SpaceX founder and CEO, even posted about the disparity on the day of Williams and Wilmore’s launch.

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk tried to take on Boeing during the first Starliner launch.

FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images

“There are too many non-technical managers at Boeing,” he wrote on X.

How long has the Boeing astronaut crew been stranded?

When the astronauts arrived aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on June 6, they were expected to stay aboard the space station for about eight days.

Their mission is a test flight, after all, and they are the spacecraft’s first crew. The goal was simply to fly to the station, leave the spacecraft docked with the station for a week to conduct tests, and return to Earth, proving that Starliner was up to the task.

“We kept talking about an eight-day mission minimum. I think we all knew it was going to be longer than that. We didn’t spend a lot of time talking about how long that mission would be,” Mark Nappi, Boeing’s vice president and commercial crew program manager, said during Thursday’s briefing.

“I wish we had just said, ‘We’re going to stay up there until we’ve finished everything we wanted to do,'” Nappi said.

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which Williams and Wilmore flew aboard, docked with the space station 262 miles (422 kilometers) above Egypt.

NASA

NASA had planned a maximum stay of 45 days for Starliner, depending on how well its batteries perform in space.

As of Friday, the astronauts and their spacecraft had been aboard the station for 51 days.

NASA said Williams and Wilmore could remain on site until mid-August while Boeing continues to work through its issues. The agency extended the 45-day waiver for the batteries to 90 days.

“We don’t have a major announcement today about a return date. We’re making great progress, but we’re not quite ready to do it yet,” Stich said during the briefing.

NASA’s Plan to Bring Astronauts Home

It was the second press conference in about a week where NASA announced there was still no return date.

That’s because the agency is testing a replacement Starliner booster at NASA’s White Sands Test Center in New Mexico and isn’t finished yet. Engineers have been replicating booster problems that occurred while Williams and Wilmore’s ship was en route to the space station.

The next step is to replicate the return trip, Stitch said, to see if Starliner’s thrusters could get the astronauts home safely.

“NASA always has backup options. We know a little bit about what those are, and we haven’t worked on them a lot, but we kind of know what they are,” Stich said. “But right now, we’re really focused on getting Butch and Suni back on Starliner.”

Meanwhile, NASA and Boeing have repeatedly said Williams and Wilmore are safe.

“One day, Starliner could serve as a backup to a Dragon mission,” Stich added.