The two astronauts, who have been stranded on the International Space Station since early June during a trip aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, will remain in space until at least February 2025.
NASA decided this Saturday that it will ask SpaceX to bring home the two astronauts who were unable to return to Earth in February of next year after their Boeing spacecraft ran into several problems in mid-air.
Astronauts Barry ‘Butch’ Willmore and Sunita ‘Suni’ Williams were due to return to Earth in mid-June, days after launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but propulsion failures and minor helium leaks in the Starliner prevented their return. .
How will they return to Earth?
NASA’s decision to have astronauts return to Earth in the space agency is about how and when the two crew members can return safely.
NASA said it will free up two seats on an upcoming SpaceX launch, known as Crew-9, which will carry a new cycle of space station crew members to the orbital outpost. By carrying two astronauts instead of the planned four, Willmore and Williams will be able to fly again in the empty seats at the end of the Crew-9 mission in February.
Crew-9 is scheduled to take off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on September 24 and return in February next year.
Meanwhile, NASA said the troubled Starliner capsule will return to Earth without a crew.
The work was planned to last about eight days.
Boeing’s Starliner space shuttle carried two astronauts on its historic launch from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday.
NASA has already said that the two astronauts do not yet have a return date, and that they are considering the option of returning in February 2025 in a SpaceX Dragon capsule or even a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
After the retirement of the space shuttles, NASA hired private companies to transport astronauts to the space station, paying billions of dollars to Boeing and SpaceX.
The Starliner was Boeing’s first manned test flight. An initial demonstration mission, conducted without a crew in 2019, did not reach the space station due to faulty software, and Boeing repeated the test in 2022. Later, more problems arose.
SpaceX has been carrying astronauts since 2020. The company’s Falcon 9 rockets have been grounded for the past two weeks after the upper stage of a satellite delivery mission failed. If the strike lasts, the next manned flights are more likely to be delayed.