Two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station

Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams, the NASA astronauts who arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) aboard Boeing’s first crewed Starliner spacecraft that departed on June 5, were supposed to stay there for eight days. It’s been more than two months since the launch, but it’s still unclear how and when they’ll return to Earth, with NASA not ruling out that it could happen as soon as February.

Starliner is one of the most important space missions of 2024, but during the trip to the International Space Station, the capsule suffered malfunctions that delayed the scheduled return for weeks. In a press conference on Wednesday, NASA explained why Starliner may not be safe for the return trip of astronauts, saying: It is being evaluated. To bring them back with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, Elon Musk’s private space company and Boeing’s competitor.

If NASA decides to return the astronauts with a SpaceX capsule instead of a Starliner, the mission will be extended by several more months. It would also be another failure for Boeing, which has had massive problems in recent years, first with serious crashes involving its 737 Max, and more recently with an Alaska Airlines flight that lost part of the fuselage in flight.

Starliner departed Cape Canaveral on June 5, after a series of delays and postponements due to various technical issues. Wilmore and Williams were supposed to join the crew on a long-duration mission to the station for about a week. The mission was to check the capsule’s launch and docking and landing systems, so that the Boeing spacecraft could receive final NASA certifications to officially become one of the private vehicles that will be used to transport people and goods to and from the station. In fact, for these activities, NASA can currently only rely on SpaceX and Roscosmos’ Soyuz launch systems.

However, during the flight to the ISS, some malfunctions occurred: NASA and Boeing performed the mission Exam The capsule’s thrusters were simulated both on Earth and in space, and it was found to work well enough to re-enter the atmosphere. However, the tests did not definitively explain the cause of the malfunctions and “in general, the NASA community wants to understand the underlying cause and the physics” behind these problems a little better, Steve Stich, the agency’s program manager, said Wednesday of the agency’s commercial flight program.

No Boeing executives were invited to the press conference, but the company has already expressed its disagreement with NASA’s assessments. In a statement last week, He argued That Starliner was able to complete the flight and return the astronauts to Earth “safely,” he said, was evidenced by data collected during tests on the propulsion devices.

(NASA via AFP)

Stitch insists that the “preferred” option is still to return Wilmore and Williams to Earth with Starliner, also because doing otherwise would create other problems. According to Ken Bowersox, one of NASA’s directors of space operations, based on the latest data, the latest analysis, and the latest discussions, consideration is being given to returning Starliner without a crew and returning the astronauts to space in a SpaceX capsule at the end of its next mission.

One possible option is to return Wilmore and Williams on SpaceX’s next Crew-9 mission, starting with two astronauts instead of four, so that there is room for them. However, that would mean folding them into the rotation of astronauts involved in activities on the ISS, and given that Crew-9 is scheduled to last until February 2025, Wilmore and Williams would remain on the station for another six months, for a total of eight months versus what should have been an eight-day mission.

In that case, the Starliner would return to Earth on its own, but that would mean reconfiguring the capsule for an unmanned reentry. Moreover, at that point, NASA would have to decide whether the data collected during the unmanned reentry is sufficient to certify the Starliner for carrying people and cargo.

NASA officials said they have “until about mid-August” to make a final decision.

– Read also: New success for the spacecraft

Boeing is the leading American aircraft manufacturer and one of two companies that won contracts to build alternative transportation systems for NASA, as well as SpaceX. But in recent times, the agency’s confidence in the company has waned, He said to Washington Post A person close to NASA management cited anonymous information because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

To produce the Starliner spacecraft, Boeing secured $4.2 billion in funding, but like SpaceX, it is far behind schedule in designing and building its capsule, which finally launched in June with two astronauts on board after a failed first uncrewed test mission in 2019 and other technical problems.

Since NASA can only rely on SpaceX and Soyuz launch systems to reach the ISS, there are also those who believe that a decision not to use Starliner to return the astronauts could prompt Boeing to pull out, Washington PostMeanwhile, NASA make it known They delayed the Crew-9 mission from August 18 to the end of September so they could have more time to decide what to do with the Starliner.