NASA astronaut stuck in space, can’t come home until 2025

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Two NASA astronauts were stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) because the plane they were on had technical problems. The two astronauts are Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore.

NASA officials are reportedly considering returning the troubled Starliner spacecraft to Earth without the two astronauts. This could keep them stuck on the ISS until 2025.

The stretched Boeing Starliner spacecraft is currently delaying the SpaceX Crew-9 mission to the ISS, and NASA is considering canceling the flight back to Earth with the crew as it appears more details of the Starliner damage.

The delay, which moves the launch of the Crew-9 mission from August 18 to September 24 no earlier.

“This will give mission managers more time to complete return planning for the Boeing Crew Flight Test,” NASA said, quoted by Live Science, Friday (9/8/2024).

The latest news comes at a tense time for NASA and Boeing. Members of Crew-9, which is slated to replace Crew-8 currently aboard the ISS, will not be able to reach the station until a free docking port opens.

The selected Harmony module is currently occupied by the Starliner spacecraft, which has been stationed on the ISS since June.

There is still no return date for the Boeing spacecraft or the astronauts who have been on the ISS for months.

Engineers at NASA are debating whether to send Starliner to Earth without a crew and bring the astronauts home aboard SpaceX in early 2025.

“I would say that the chance of an unmanned Starliner return has increased quite a bit based on how the situation has evolved over the last week or so, and that’s why we is considering that option in more detail,” said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate.

“But, again, new data coming in, new analysis, different discussions – we can shift our conclusions in another direction,” he said.

The problems began shortly after Wilmore and Williams blasted into orbit on the Boeing spacecraft after years of project delays, and successfully embarked on a crewed Starliner flight from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on June 5. But during the trip the Starliner had several technical problems.

Wilmore and Williams were expected to spend a week in orbit, but during the flight the Starliner had a series of problems, including five helium leaks and five failures in its reaction control system.

This allowed technicians to find a solution on the ground and extended the two astronauts’ stay on the ISS from the planned week to two months and counting.

NASA engineers say they need more time to collect data on the Starliner’s flight capabilities and correct its errors. However, the steps towards the flight home finally stopped. NASA hopes to begin a flight-ready review for the spacecraft in early August, but the process has not yet begun.

NASA said it had prepared several contingency plans, one of which was to send only two of the four Crew-9 astronauts to the ISS so that Wilmore and Williams could return with them in February 2025.

(fab/fab)

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