Boeing Starliner took the astronauts to the International Space Station – but NASA doesn’t think it’s safe for the return trip. What happens next?
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were meant to go to the International Space Station on a roughly ten-day mission. Instead, they have been “stuck” there since June, as the reliability of their spacecraft – Boeing Starliner – has not met NASA’s strict standards for crewed flight.
As for Wilmore and Williams, they will remain aboard the ISS until February 2025, replacing two of the upcoming Crew 9 astronauts.What is Starliner? Boeing has been in partnership with NASA going all the way back to the beginning. From Mariner 10, to the Shuttle program, and the critical Saturn V rocket that took people to the Moon, the aerospace company has been a reliable and innovative player in the space sector.
It was deemed a partial success by Boeing, as the spacecraft was able to make a soft landing back on Earth. But the issues would have ultimately caused the destruction of the vehicle if they had not been caught and corrected. But as the spacecraft neared the moment of docking with the ISS, some of its thrusters were not performing as expected, and there were leaks in its helium system. Helium gas is critical to push propellant to the thrusters, so this was a concerning development.The end of an era When NASA decided to end the Space Shuttle program in 2011 due to the increasing resources required, it became dependent on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to send astronauts to space.
While NASA has always used commercial contractors to build space technology, the agency has then gone on to operate it. What makes the commercial program different is that now companies are being trusted to operate the services as well.
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