NASA
Boeing’s astronauts have been stuck in space for months
In June, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams became the first astronauts to fly aboard Boeing’s Starliner ship, which is supposed to be another ship in NASA’s roster alongside the SpaceX Crew Dragon. The duo was conducting the ship’s first crewed test flight, designed to prove it was ready for routine human spaceflight.
But the Starliner’s thrusters started glitching as it approached the International Space Station shortly after launch.
After some troubleshooting, the ship ultimately docked to the ISS and Williams and Wilmore made it to the station safely. NASA and Boeing weren’t sure how the thrusters would perform on the way back to Earth, though.
After weeks of testing, analysis, and reviews, NASA officials did not feel confident enough to trust Starliner with the astronauts’ lives again.
In a decision that shook up the agency’s human spaceflight schedule, NASA sent Starliner back to Earth without its crew.
NASA TV
Their mission was originally planned for about eight days, though NASA officials have said that was a tentative timeline since they were conducting a test flight.
SpaceX clobbered Boeing in this space race
SpaceX and Boeing developed and flew their respective spaceships through the same NASA initiative, the Commercial Crew Program.
One was much cheaper, though. NASA granted Boeing $4.2 billion to get Starliner space-station ready, and gave SpaceX $2.6 billion for Crew Dragon.
NASA
Hindsight, of course, is twenty-twenty.
“If we’d had a model that would have predicted what we saw tonight perfectly, yeah, it looks like an easy decision to go say we could have had a crewed fight,” Stich said after the Starliner landing. “But we didn’t have that.”
Astronauts left behind
Meanwhile, two NASA astronauts who were supposed to be part of the Crew-9 mission had to stay behind.
Instead of launching with their crewmates on Saturday, Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson watched from the ground.
SpaceX
Crew-9 would have been Cardman’s first spaceflight and Wilson’s fourth. But their seats in the Crew Dragon are empty, since NASA is reserving them for Williams and Wilmore when the spaceship returns to Earth next year.
In an X post, Cardman said that handing the spaceship over to Hague was “both heartbreaking and an honor.”
She wished they could all fly together, she added, “but we choose without hesitation to be part of something much larger than ourselves.”
Meanwhile, the two Starliner astronauts will continue working full-time conducting experiments and maintenance on the ISS.
In a call with reporters on September 13, Williams said she missed her two dogs, and Wilmore said he would miss most of his daughter’s senior year of high school. But both were adamant that this is all part of the job.
“It’s a very risky business and things do not always turn out the way you want,” Wilmore said.
“90% of our training is preparing for the unexpected,” he added. “Because we are pushing the edges of the envelope in everything that we do and it is not easy.”