NASA has decided it’s too risky to have Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft return to Earth from the International Space Station with its two crew members, and so those astronauts will extend their stay by several months and come back on a SpaceX Dragon capsule instead. Starliner, which has been in the midst of its first crewed flight after years of delay, will be reprogrammed to make an uncrewed departure from the space station next month.
Top mission managers said today that they decided unanimously to make a dramatic change in what was originally expected to be a test flight lasting only a couple of weeks. They said there was too much uncertainty surrounding the thruster problems that cropped up during Starliner’s trip to the space station in early June.
“All of us really wanted to complete the test flight with crew, and I think unanimously we’re disappointed not to be able to do that,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Boeing “worked hard” to address questions about the thruster system, but in the end, the space agency took what it considered to be the safer course. He said NASA learned its lessons from “mistakes done in the past,” including safety lapses that led to space shuttle disasters in 1986 and 2003.
“Our core value is safety, and it is our North Star,” Nelson said.
