NASA Officials To Decide The Method of Return For Astronauts On Board Boeing’s Starliner This Weekend

NASA has announced that it will decide over this weekend whether Boeing’s Starliner is safe enough to return astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to Earth.

The alternative is for them to remain on the International Space Station without a clear way to get home. There’s a possibility of them coming on SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, but this would delay their arrival back home by a year.

According to Eric Berger, senior space editor at Ars Technica, it would also leave the ISS astronauts without a spacecraft to return to Earth if there was an emergency at the station for about three weeks.

SpaceX, founded by CEO Elon Musk, is also not without its issues regarding rocket launches and equipment failures. Critics of the company call out its test site’s impact on the environment in South Texas, and at least two of its flights have failed due to equipment malfunctions.

Berger said if NASA wanted to take the lowest-risk solution, it would opt to fly Williams and Wilmore back to Earth on Crew Dragon. Senior decision-makers in the space agency’s Commercial Crew and Human Spaceflight programs are now tasked with choosing which of the two options is the best.

Williams and Wilmore piloted the first flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft in June after several delays related to technical issues detected following numerous attempts at launching the commercially built capsule.

The mission was initially scheduled to last about nine days. However, problems including leaks in the spacecraft’s propulsion system and several malfunctioning thrusters have made Williams and Wilmore’s stay much longer than expected.

“The question really is how much of a risk they are willing to take with Starliner,” Berger said. “As of a week ago, there were still significant parties to this decision, like the crew office and some engineering and flight directors, who were uncomfortable coming back on Starliner as it is.”

According to Berger, NASA has held program control board meetings throughout the week to evaluate the space agency’s options and reach a final decision. He said the risks involved to Williams and Wilmore are core to these ongoing conversations.

“If they get enough failures at the wrong time on Starliner, that would be catastrophic for Butch and Sunni coming back to Earth,” Berger noted. “They’re trying to assess the likelihood of that happening and understand the root cause of those failures. As of last week, they still didn’t have a root cause.”

Berger described NASA’s looming decision as the most significant human spaceflight question the space agency has had to resolve in terms of crew safety since the Columbia mission. Seven astronauts were on board the spacecraft in 2003 when insulating foam struck a wing, ultimately leading to the vessel’s disintegration.

He said Williams and Wilmores’ lives are at risk, but the space agency has options, unlike before.

“The big difference between now and Columbia is that back then, the crew had no way to return to Earth but to return on the space shuttle. There was no other spacecraft available,” Berger said. “They didn’t really have a choice. In this case, NASA does have a choice.”

“This is a really unique moment for NASA in spaceflight because they have never really had a backup capability for humans to orbit. It makes it more of a difficult decision,” he added. “The odds of Starliner failing are quite low, but the odds of Starliner failing are much higher than the odds of Crew Dragon failing. NASA’s got to decide where that line of acceptable risk is.”

As Williams and Wilmore await the news, Berger said they are likely attending to a number of maintenance and operational tasks for the station.

“At the end of the day, NASA said they would decide on crew safety. So, what is the best — safest – path for Butch and Sunny to get back to Earth,” he added. “But what I would say is this: careers are on the line with this decision.”