What should have been a quick trip to the International Space Station may turn into an eight-month stay for two NASA astronauts if they have to switch from Boeing to SpaceX for a ride home.
There’s lingering uncertainty over the safety of Boeing’s new Starliner capsule, NASA officials said yesterday [Macau time], and the space agency is split over the risk. As a result, chances are increasing that test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams may have to watch from the space station as their Starliner is cut loose to return to Earth empty.
If that happens, NASA would leave behind two of four astronauts from the next SpaceX taxi flight in late September, with the vacant seats set aside for Wilmore and Williams on the return trip next February.
The pair expected to be gone just a week or two when they launched June 5 as Starliner’s first crew.
NASA is bringing in additional experts to analyze the thruster failures experienced by Starliner before it docked. At the same time, NASA is looking more closely at SpaceX as a backup,
At this point, “we could take either path,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s space operations mission chief.
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