The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (“NASA”) held a news conference and issued a press release yesterday (8/24/2024) announcing that Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which is currently docked with the International Space Station (“ISS”), will return to earth without astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore.
The move will allow NASA to mitigate risk to the astronauts and allow NASA to continue gathering test data during Starliner’s unmanned return to earth in early September (2024).
Williams and Wilmore will continue their work aboard the ISS as part of the Expedition 71/72 crew through February 2025, when they are scheduled to return home aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft along with two other crew members.
NASA and Boeing identified helium leaks and experienced issues with Starliner’s reaction control thrusters as it docked with the ISS on June 6, 2024, resulting in significant effort by engineers to troubleshoot the failures and develop contingency plans. NASA experts have determined that the spaceship does not meet NASA’s safety and performance requirements for human spaceflight, so Starliner will return to earth, unmanned, in early September 2024. Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will return to earth aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on or about February 2025.
The NASA press release may be read in its entirety HERE.
The SpaceX program, despite having been initially funded to a lesser degree than Boeing’s Starliner program, is far outpacing Boeing’s space program and its Dragon spacecraft will be used as a ‘lifeboat’ to more safely return Starliner’s test pilot astronauts Williams and Wilmore to earth.
This situation demonstrates the absolute importance of redundancy in all matters of space travel, as there is no room (or very, very little room) for error when humans are placed into orbit (or beyond) within the vacuum of space. The risk of NASA losing astronauts in a potentially preventable situation, as happened with the crews of Apollo I and Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia, would be untenable for NASA and would risk damaging the plans for future private/government space missions – as is currently happening between NASA, SpaceX and Boeing.
My brothers and sisters, let’s pray that all of the sudden changes to ISS operations will be met with success and that all of the astronauts currently in space will remain healthy and make it home safely! Amen!