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After more than two months of testing and consultations, NASA decided that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams would return aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon in February 2025, followed by an uncrewed return flight aboard Boeing’s Starliner to the International Space Station in June. At a press conference on Saturday, Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said there was “too much uncertainty” about Starliner’s thruster projections to move forward with a crewed return flight.
The current plan is for the first Starliner crew to return aboard SpaceX’s Crew 9, scheduled to launch to the ISS at the end of September. Crew 9 was originally scheduled to carry a four-person crew, but will fly with just two to make room for Wilmore and Williams’ return. The spacecraft has been modified to accommodate two astronauts, and Dragon spacesuits will be added to the cargo to wear on the return journey. By the time Wilmore and Williams depart, the pair will have been aboard the space station for about eight months. The Starliner test flight was scheduled to last just over a week.
The next step is to prepare Starliner for undocking and complete the uncrewed flight test. NASA plans to conduct the second part of the readiness review for this process this week, and expects undocking to occur early next month. “We’ve made changes to our planned separation sequence, and we’ll review that during the readiness review,” Stich said. “We’re going to have a simplified separation technique to get us away from the station a little bit quicker.”
The issues with Starliner’s thrusters are “very complex” and their performance is “hard to predict,” Stich said. Because it’s not possible to predict exactly how the thrusters will work, from undocking to the deorbit burn, the potential risks to astronauts are too high, he explained.
“We’ve made mistakes in the past,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said. “We lost two space shuttles because we didn’t have a culture of openness.” With that backdrop to the debate, Nelson said, “We’ve urged all of our employees to speak up if they disagree. Space flight, even the safest and most routine, involves risks. And test flights are inherently neither safe nor routine. So the decision to leave Butch and Suni on the International Space Station and return home uncrewed on the Boeing Starliner is a reflection of our commitment to safety.”
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