The astronauts who traveled to the International Space Station in early June on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft may have to wait until 2025 to come back home, NASA officials said Wednesday.
There is concern about Starliner’s capability after multiple malfunctions stranded the astronauts, so NASA could use an alternative, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, in February 2025.
“We could take either path,” said Ken Bowersox, the associate administrator for NASA’s space operations mission directorate. “And reasonable people could pick either path depending on where their view is on, on our position and the uncertainty bound that we have for the data that we’ve got on the thruster system, on the propulsion system.”
If the astronauts stay until February, it would not break the record for the longest stay aboard the space station. It would, however, be significantly longer than their originally planned weeklong stay, which could now be as long as eight months.
NASA commercial crew program manager Steve Stich said the “prime” option is still to return the astronauts on the Starliner.
“You know, our prime option is to return Butch and Suni on Starliner,” Stich said. “However, we have done the requisite planning to make sure we have other options open, and so we have been working with SpaceX to ensure that they’re ready to respond on Crew Nine for a contingency of returning a Butch and Suni on Crew Nine if we need that.
“We have set up the Dragon for Crew Nine to have flexibility, to have only two passengers fly up on that flight, and then we could return four crew members in the February 2025, time frame,” he added.
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No decision has been made as to how the astronauts will return. Boeing’s Starliner began its first-ever crewed mission to space with astronauts Suni Wiliams and Butch Wilmore.
Boeing has faced an uproar from consumers for a while. This year, however, it came to a fever pitch as consumers began to avoid the manufacturer’s planes in fear of an in-flight incident such as the one that ripped the door plug off a Boeing plane during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.