NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has been confined to the International Space Station for nearly two months due to thruster problems and a helium leak.
It’s becoming increasingly likely that SpaceX will have to step in and bring them home. Crew Dragon spacecraft For many years, it has successfully transported astronauts to and from the ISS.
“We operate two different systems,” he said. NASA’s Commercial Crew Program” he said at a news conference on Thursday, referring to Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.
“Obviously, the backup option is to use a different system,” Stich added. “I don’t know when that time will come, but until that time comes, I don’t think I’d want to get into those details.”
SpaceX put astronauts into space much faster than Boeing
The Commercial Crew Program funded SpaceX and Boeing to develop their respective spacecraft as reliable astronaut vehicles for NASA.
SpaceX did it much faster and cheaper.Crew Dragon completed its maiden spaceflight in 2020. Starliner is currently fumbling around on its maiden spaceflight.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk also posted about the difference between Williams and Wilmore on the day of their launch.
“Boeing has too many non-technical managers,” he wrote. X.
How long will Boeing’s astronaut crew be stranded for?
When the astronauts arrived aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on June 6, they Stay on the space station About 8 days.
After all, their mission was a test flight, and they were the first crew on the spacecraft: The purpose was simply to fly there, dock the spacecraft to the station for a week for testing, then return to Earth and prove that Starliner could perform its mission.
“We kept saying, ‘Eight-day mission minimum,’ and I think we all knew it was going to be longer than that. We just didn’t spend a lot of time talking about how much longer it would be,” Mark Nappi, Boeing’s vice president and program manager for commercial crew programs, said during a briefing Thursday.
“I regret not saying, ‘I’m going to stay there until I’ve done everything I want to do,'” Nappi said.
NASA had previously determined that Starliner would stay on the ISS for a maximum of 45 days, based on battery performance in space.
As of Friday, the astronauts and spacecraft had been aboard the space station for 51 days.
NASA now says Williams and Wilmore could remain on the plane until mid-August while Boeing continues troubleshooting. The agency has extended a 45-day waiver for the battery issue to 90 days.
“There are no big announcements today in terms of a return date. We’ve made great progress, but we’re not ready yet,” Stich said at a news conference.
NASA’s astronaut return plan
This was the second press conference in about a week in which NASA said a return date had not yet been determined.
That’s because NASA isn’t done testing the spare Starliner thrusters at the agency’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, where engineers are replicating the thruster problems that occurred on the Williams and Wilmore spacecraft’s en route to the space station.
Stich said the next step is to recreate the return journey to see if Starliner’s thrusters can bring astronauts home safely.
“NASA has always had contingency plans, and we kind of know what they are, and we haven’t worked on them a lot yet, but we have a general idea,” Stich said, “But right now we’re really focused on getting Butch and Suni home on the Starliner.”
Meanwhile, NASA and Boeing have repeatedly insisted that Williams and Wilmore are safe.
“One day Starliner may serve as a backup for the Dragon mission,” Stitch added.
