The saga of the "not stranded" Starliner astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) has taken an embarrassing turn with NASA admitting that their one-week visit to the orbiting lab could be extended into 2025 and they may come home in a SpaceX Dragon.
Starliner has been an ongoing embarrassment for Boeing at a time when the company is already reeling from a string of air disasters, leadership shuffles, stock crashes, and even a felony conviction. The first crewed mission was supposed to be vindication for the troubled aerospace giant, but it turned into a cosmic thorn in the side.
After lifting off at 10:52 am EDT on June 5, 2024 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station atop an Atlas V rocket with NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams aboard, the mission immediately ran into serious trouble. A helium leak detected before launch that caused several launch delays remained uncorrected and was followed by the failure of no less than five of the attitude thrusters plus a damaged oxygen valve.
Starliner was able to dock with the space station, though with some difficulty, but Wilmore and Williams have remained, in the words of NASA, "not stranded" long past the originally planned eight-day stay. Officially, this has been described by Boeing and NASA as simply an exercise in caution as engineers back on Earth worked to recreate the malfunctions and evaluate the best way to get the astronauts home. And getting home was certainly going to be aboard Starliner.
That changed during a media conference on Wednesday, August 8, 2024 that included Space Operations Mission Directorate associate administrator Ken Bowersox, Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich, and International Space Station Program manager Dana Weigel.
In providing an update on the Starliner situation and how this affects the ISS, NASA indicated that Boeing and the space agency's optimism was covering a much more serious affair. While still trying to put the best face on things, it's now likely that Wilmore and Williams will be "not stranded" on the station until February 2025.
Worse, they might not be coming back in Starliner, but aboard a SpaceX Dragon.
And it doesn't end there. It's bad enough that Boeing might have its bacon saved by Elon Musk. It's even worse that the Starliner capsule might be abandoned.
Officially, NASA is studying options, but those options seem to be firming into a plan. The ISS is notable for a lot of traffic, with crew and cargo ships regularly coming and going and the docking berths booked years in advance. Already one visit has been rescheduled to allow the Starliner to remain for an extra month before leaving in November.
According to some anonymous sources inside NASA, this delay is needed because the engineers may be reprogramming the spacecraft's computers so it can undock empty and autonomously from the station and then reenter the Earth's atmosphere to burn up like so much space junk.
The final decision hasn't been made and it's very likely that NASA and Boeing are hoping that some technical solution will appear before circumstances make the decision for them.
Whether their optimism pays off remains to be seen.
Source: NASA
