Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft carrying the crew returned to Earth shortly after midnight Eastern Time on Sept. 7, 2024, without its two-person crew. The remotely piloted return marked the end of a fraught test flight to the International Space Station that left two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams, on the station months longer than planned after NASA decided it was unsafe to pilot the capsule back due to thruster failures.
Wilmore and Williams will remain on the International Space Station until February 2025, when they will return to Earth in a SpaceX Dragon capsule.
The Conversation US spoke with former International Space Station commander Michael Fossum about NASA’s decision to send the spacecraft back unmanned, the future of the Starliner program and the crew’s extended stay on the space station.
What does this decision mean for NASA?
NASA awarded contracts to both Boeing and SpaceX in 2014 to deliver crew transport vehicles to the International Space Station through the Commercial Crew Program. Early in the program, most bets were on Boeing to take the lead, given its extensive experience in aerospace.
However, SpaceX moved quickly with its new rocket, the Falcon 9, and its cargo ship, Dragon. Although they had some initial setbacks during testing, they aggressively built, tested, and learned from each setback. In 2020, SpaceX successfully launched its first test crew to the International Space Station.
Meanwhile, Boeing has struggled with developmental setbacks. The outcome of this first test flight is a huge disappointment for Boeing and NASA. But NASA leadership has voiced its support for Boeing, and many experts, including myself, believe it remains in the agency’s best interest to have more than one U.S. crew launch system to support continued human space operations.
NASA is also continuing its exchange partnership with Russia, which provides the agency with multiple ways to get crew members to and from the space station.
As space station operations continue, NASA and its partners have plenty of options for getting people to and from the station, ensuring that they always have the essential crew on the station – even if there are launch interruptions for one of the capable crew vehicles. Having Starliner as an option will help with that redundancy.
What does this decision mean for Boeing?
I think Boeing’s reputation will suffer eventually. They’re going head-to-head with SpaceX. Now, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft has flown multiple times. It’s proven to be a reliable way to get to and from the space station.
It’s important to remember that this was a test flight for Starliner. Of course, the program managers want every test flight to be perfect, but you can’t predict every potential problem through ground testing. It’s not surprising that there were some problems – you expect them on a test flight.
The space environment is unforgiving. A small problem can become catastrophic in weightlessness. It is difficult to replicate these situations on the ground.
The technology used by SpaceX and Boeing is also radically different from the capsule technology used in the early days of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs.
NASA has evolved over the past two decades and has taken strategic steps to advance its mission. The agency has built on its heritage of thinking outside the box. It was an innovative move to break with tradition and use commercial competitors to advance the program. NASA gave companies a set of requirements and left it up to them to figure out how to meet them.
What does this decision mean for the Starliner crew?
I know Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to be rock solid professionals and I believe their first thoughts are to complete their mission safely. They are both very experienced astronauts with previous experience on long duration space stations. I am sure they take this with a grain of salt.
Before joining NASA, Williams was a Navy aviator and Wilmore was a combat veteran, so these two know how to take risks and accomplish their missions. These kinds of unfavorable outcomes are always possible on a test mission. I’m sure they’ll have a positive outlook and use their bonus time in space to advance science, technology, and space exploration.
Their families bear the brunt of the impact. They were prepared to welcome the crew home in less than two weeks and now have to adjust to being unexpectedly separated for eight months.
Right now, NASA is dealing with a domino effect, with more astronauts than expected on the space station. More people means more consumables – like food and clothing – are needed. The space station has supported a large crew for short periods of time in the past, but with nine crew members on board today, its systems have to work harder to purify recycled drinking water, generate oxygen and remove carbon dioxide from its atmosphere.
Wilmore and Williams also consume food, and they did not have the clothing and other personal items they would need for an eight-month stay. So NASA has already begun ramping up those deliveries on cargo ships.
What does this decision mean for the future?
Human spaceflight is incredibly tough and unforgiving. A million things have to go right for a successful mission. It is impossible to fully understand the performance of systems in a microgravity environment until they are tested in space.
NASA has had numerous failures and near misses in its attempt to put Americans on the moon. They lost the Apollo 1 crew in a fire during a preflight test. They launched the first space shuttle in 1981 and faced problems throughout the 30-year life of that program, including the horrific losses of Challenger and Columbia.
After more than 30 years of no other U.S. options, there are now three separate human spacecraft programs underway. In addition to the SpaceX Crew Dragon and Boeing Starliner, NASA’s Orion spacecraft is scheduled to fly four astronauts around the moon in the coming years for the Artemis II mission.
These programs have had setbacks and bumps along the way — and there will be more — but I haven’t been this excited about human spaceflight since I was 11 years old, cheering on Apollo and dreaming about putting the first human footprints on Mars.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization that brings you facts and reliable analysis to help you understand our complex world. It was written by: Michael E. Fossum, Texas A&M University
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Michael E. Fossum is a retired NASA astronaut. The people involved with NASA are all his friends and colleagues.