The NASA This Saturday the two astronauts of the first mission with a crew of a Boeing Starliner ship will return to the International Space Station (ISS), which was lost there 80 days after the device failed, to return in February 2025 on a spaceship.
Astronauts Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore and Sunita ‘Suni’ Williams were due to return to Earth in mid-June, about a week after their launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but a propellant failure and a small helium leak on the Starliner stopped it from returning.
“NASA has decided that Butch and Suni will return with a crew next February and the Starliner will return without a crew,” US space agency administrator Bill Nelson announced at a press conference in Houston, which concluded on weeks of consideration.
Errors
Nelson acknowledged “mistakes” and said that NASA has collaborated with Boeing – in direct communication with its new CEO, Kelly Ortberg – to provide “the data necessary to make this decision”. get and “root causes” of the Starliner’s problems and the “design improvements” it needs.
NASA previously said it did not have a return date for the two astronauts and was considering the option of returning in February 2025 in a SpaceX Dragon capsule – on a mission called Crew-9 -, a fact that was finally confirmed after her meeting of agency leaders today to analyze data.
The two astronauts “will return home in the Dragon spacecraft with two other crew members assigned to the Crew-9 mission of the SpaceX organization,” reveals a statement from NASA, which predicts that the Starliner will “turn around and land. ” controlled and autonomous at the beginning of September.”
Date of mission
The SpaceX mission is scheduled to take off on September 24 from the Kennedy Space Center; At first it was going to carry four people, but it will give two seats to the stretched astronauts, who will return to their duties in the coming months.
“Space flight is dangerous even when it’s safe and normal, and a test flight, by its very nature, is not safe or normal, hence the decision to keep Butch and Suni on the ISS and the Boeing Starliner was brought empty due to its commitment to safety,” said Nelson.
Boeing, who was not present at the press conference, said through the crew.
