When astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams blasted into space in June, they expected their trip to last 8 days. Now NASA has decided that the astronauts will come home around February, 2025 – about 9 months after they left. For safety, they’ll be taking a different spaceship home.
The International Space Station
The International Space Station (ISS) is a science laboratory that orbits above the Earth. It has been home to many astronauts over the years.
In June, Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore were sent to the ISS on Starliner – a spacecraft built by a company called Boeing. Boeing has had a long history of making airplanes and spacecraft.
The trip to the ISS was supposed to be the final test flight for Starliner, to prove that it was safe. Even before it launched, Starliner had had some major problems and serious delays.
(Source: NASA Johnson Space Center [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.)
Starliner got the astronauts to the ISS safely, but there were problems on the way. Starliner has 28 small jets that help it steer in space. But five of those jets didn’t work properly on the way to the ISS. Starliner also had a problem with leaking helium gas.
Since then, NASA and Boeing have been studying Starliner’s problems, and trying to decide if it would be safe for the astronauts to return using the spacecraft.
Boeing believes the aircraft is safe, but NASA experts weren’t so sure. In the past, some NASA missions have ended in disaster. This time, NASA said it had to put the safety of the astronauts first.
“It was just too much risk for the crew,” said a program manager at NASA.
(Source: NASA Johnson Space Center [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.)
NASA says that Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams will remain on the ISS until February. Starliner, which can pilot itself, will return to Earth empty, probably in September.
Another crew of four astronauts was set to arrive at the ISS this summer in a Crew Dragon spacecraft built by the SpaceX company. The timing of that flight has now been changed, and only two of the original four astronauts will take part. That will leave two empty seats for Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore to return to Earth when the mission ends in February.
NASA’s decision is a big blow for Boeing, which was hoping the test flight would be a success.
NASA has contracts with both Boeing and SpaceX to provide its spacecraft. NASA used to have its own spacecraft, but that program ended. in recent years, it has depended on Russia to take its astronauts to the ISS.
NASA’s decision is a big blow for Boeing. SpaceX has had a working spacecraft program since 2020. Boeing has spent far more money, but Starliner still hasn’t been proven successful. Above, astronauts stand in front of models of Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Dragon in 2018.
(Source: Robert Markowitz [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.)
When NASA first made its contracts, many people thought the agency should only work with Boeing, which had lots of experience. At the time, many people thought SpaceX didn’t have enough experience and didn’t know what it was doing.
But SpaceX has had a working spacecraft program since 2020, though it got just $2.6 billion from NASA. Boeing got $4.2 billion, then spent even more money, and Starliner still hasn’t been proven successful. Now NASA is counting on SpaceX to rescue astronauts brought to the ISS by Boeing.
Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams are hard at work with the other astronauts currently on the ISS. They have already worked on 42 different experiments. “We are having a great time here on ISS,” said Ms. Williams.