Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams to return in February 2025 if Starliner remains unsafe
NASA is in talks with SpaceX to bring back the Boeing starliner crew Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams from the ISS on the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft by February 2025.
The Boeing Starliner crew has been stuck on the ISS due to multiple helium leaks and thruster malfunctions. The engineers at Boeing and NASA have been trying continuously to find a solution to make the Boeing Starliner spacecraft safe for astronauts to return to Earth.
The Boeing team has been carrying out ground tests in White Sands, New Mexico, to troubleshoot the issues and find a solution.
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The SpaceX Crew 9 mission, which was supposed to take four astronauts to the space station by August 18, has now been delayed and will not launch by the end of September. This delay “allows more time for mission managers to finalise return planning for the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test,” NASA wrote in a statement on Tuesday, August 6.
NASA is also thinking of keeping two seats empty and sending only two astronauts on the SpaceX Crew 9 mission so that Butch and Sunita Williams could return to Earth with the Crew 9 astronauts.
The Crew-9 mission will transport NASA astronauts Zena Cardman, Nick Hague, and Stephanie Wilson with Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov to the ISS using a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. However, the names of two astronauts to be withdrawn from the mission to occupy Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams remain unclear.
Also, the docking port now occupied by the Starliner crew spacecraft has to be free for the upcoming Crew-9 astronauts to dock at the International Space Station. If the spacecraft remains unsafe for the astronauts, Boeing will take the actions necessary to configure Starliner for an uncrewed return, said a Boeing representative in a statement during a briefing.
