NASA Will Keep Stranded Astronauts In Space 6 More Months

LOADING ERROR LOADING CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA decided Saturday it’s too risky to bring two astronauts back to Earth in Boeing’s troubled new capsule, and they’ll have to wait until next year for a ride home with SpaceX. A cascade of vexing thruster failures and helium leaks in the new capsule marred their trip to the space station, and they ended up in a holding pattern as engineers conducted tests and debated what to do about the trip back. Advertisement After almost three months, the decision finally came down from NASA’s highest ranks on Saturday. As Starliner’s test pilots, the pair should have overseen this critical last leg of the journey, with touchdown in the U.S. desert. Retired Navy captains with previous long-duration spaceflight experience, Wilmore, 61, and Williams, 58, anticipated surprises when they accepted the shakedown cruise of a new spacecraft, although not quite to this extent. Advertisement Before their June 5 launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, they said their families bought into the uncertainty and stress of their professional careers decades ago. During their lone orbital news conference last month, they said they had trust in the thruster testing being conducted. Wilmore’s wife, Deanna, was equally stoic in an interview earlier this month with WVLT-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee, their home state. In this photo provided by NASA, Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts Butch Wilmore, left, and Suni Williams pose for a portrait inside the vestibule between the forward port on the International Space Station’s Harmony module and Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on June 13, 2024. (NASA via AP, File) via Associated Press The SpaceX capsule currently parked at the space station is reserved for the four residents who have been there since March. NASA said it would be unsafe to squeeze two more into the capsule, except in an emergency. The docked Russian Soyuz capsule is even tighter, capable of flying only three — two of them Russians wrapping up a yearlong stint. Last year, the Russian Space Agency had to rush up a replacement Soyuz capsule for three men whose original craft was damaged by space junk. The switch pushed their mission beyond a year, a U.S. space endurance record still held by Frank Rubio. Bad software fouled the first test flight without a crew in 2019, prompting a do-over in 2022. Then parachute and other issues cropped up, including a helium leak in the capsule’s propellant system that nixed a launch attempt in May. Besides needed for space station rendezvous, they keep the capsule pointed in the right direction at flight’s end as bigger engines steer the craft out of orbit. Advertisement With the Columbia disaster still fresh in many minds — the shuttle broke apart during reentry in 2003, killing all seven aboard — NASA embraced open debate over Starliner’s return capability. Dissenting views were stifled during Columbia’s doomed flight, just as they were during Challenger’s in 1986. Despite Saturday’s decision, NASA isn’t giving up on Boeing. Boeing won the bigger contract: more than $4 billion, compared with SpaceX’s $2.6 billion. With station supply runs already under its belt, SpaceX aced its first of now nine astronaut flights in 2020, while Boeing got bogged down in design flaws that set the company back more than $1 billion. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nasa-will-keep-stranded-astronauts-in-space-6-more-months_n_66ca1802e4b09896bd897228