Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is pictured docked to the International Space Station orbiting above Egypt’s Mediterranean coast on June 13, 2024.
NASA
NASA aims to soon decide whether its astronauts will return on Boeing‘s misfiring Starliner — or instead turn to SpaceX as a rescue option — with agency leadership on Wednesday saying a decision is about a week away.
“Roughly by mid-August, we need to decide” on the Starliner return plan, NASA Commercial Crew program manager Steve Stich said during a press conference.
NASA did not specify whether mid-August is in reference to a specific date, such as Aug. 16, or a broader range.
The deadline for the agency’s decision is driven by the timing of the next crew launch. NASA on Tuesday delayed the launch of SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission by a month, to Sept. 24, in order to buy itself more time to figure out the Starliner situation.
“I don’t think we’re too far away from making that call,” NASA Associate Administrator Ken Bowersox said earlier during the conference.
NASA leadership confirmed that the agency does not have a consensus internally on whether it will stick with its plan to return astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board Starliner or instead send the Boeing capsule down empty and use SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft to bring the astronauts back.
The Starliner capsule “Calypso” has now been in space 64 days, its mission extended indefinitely while Boeing and NASA conduct testing in an attempt to find the root cause for why multiple of the spacecraft’s thrusters failed during docking.
Bowersox confirmed that the agency sees a “fairly broad” range of “additional risk” that more thrusters fail without warning when the capsule returns.
“We have to compare all those risks and we’ll weigh all that as we make our final decision,” Bowersox said.
In a telling indicator of the current feeling inside NASA, officials used the word “uncertainty” 18 times during Wednesday’s press conference.
Three return options
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour is seen from the International Space Station, illuminated by the spacecraft’s navigation lights and glow of its engine plume.
NASA
NASA has been preparing a trio of possible plans for returning Wilmore and Williams.
The first is to return the pair on board Starliner and launch SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission with its planned quartet.
The second is to fly Starliner back empty and remove two astronauts from the Crew-9 mission. That mission, already scheduled for a typical six-month stint at the ISS, would fly back as planned in February with Wilmore and Williams onboard. NASA declined to specify which two astronauts would be taken off the Crew-9 flight.
The third option would be to return Starliner empty and stick with launching four people on the Crew-9 mission. That would mean Wilmore and Williams would split up for the return, with one coming back with the Crew-8 mission after Crew-9 launches, and the other with Crew-9 when it returns in February. That option would represent the first time SpaceX would fly five passengers on its Dragon spacecraft.
Boeing continues to make its case to NASA that Starliner is safe, with the company going so far as to make public appeals about the amount of thruster testing that’s been done.
But NASA remains unconvinced, given the inconclusive results of the testing thus far, and the agency’s debates are expected to continue into the days ahead. If the agency board that oversees the Commercial Crew program can’t come to a consensus, the decision may eventually be elevated to NASA’s chief, Administrator Bill Nelson.
