NASA announced on Saturday that it will wait until next year to return the two astronauts stuck on the International Space Station to Earth aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule.
NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore have been unable to return home due to significant issues with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that transports them to the space station.
NASA has announced its final decision to utilise Elon Musk’s SpaceX to rescue the two astronauts, whose intended eight-day space mission has grown into a hazy multi-month journey.
Veteran astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, both former military test pilots, became the first crew to fly the Boeing Starliner to the International Space Station on June 5 for an eight-day test trip.
However, Starliner’s propulsion system experienced a series of malfunctions beginning within the first 24 hours of its trip to the ISS, resulting in months of delays. Five of its 28 thrusters failed, resulting in many helium leaks that pressurize the thrusters.
NASA and Boeing engineers are currently redesigning the Starliner so that it may return to Earth in September without a crew. While NASA officials stated that the spacecraft would still be used for crewed flights, this is yet another blow to the company’s image, which has been intensely scrutinised in recent years for engineering and manufacturing errors.
Boeing and SpaceX are part of NASA’s commercial crew program, which was created to encourage private-sector companies to compete for the right to transport humans to the space station. SpaceX conducted its first successful crewed mission in 2020.
In 2014, NASA gave Boeing a $4.2 billion contract to build a capsule capable of six crewed missions to the International Space Station; SpaceX obtained a comparable $2.6 billion contract that year and has since made nine such flights in its Dragon capsule. Crew-9 would represent the tenth.
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