NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were supposed to be on an eight-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS) for the first crewed test flight of the Boeing Starliner. But problems with the Starliner’s thrusters have meant that, while they did arrive safely, NASA officials have been hesitant for them to use the vehicle to return to Earth, and the pair have now been in space for over two months. Now, the pair could travel home in a SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle in February 2025.
NASA has previously said it was focused on getting the astronauts home using the Starliner. But as the problems with the vehicle have dragged on, the agency is now considering using a different vehicle for their safe return.
“We’ve got multiple options. We don’t just have to bring a crew back on Starliner, for example, we could bring them back on another vehicle. That’s something that we’re going to have to deal with in the future,” said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, in a briefing today.
He emphasized that this type of situation was why NASA is so keen to have multiple vehicles available: “We could find ourselves in a situation where we need to bring a [SpaceX] Dragon crew or a [Russian] Soyuz crew back on a Starliner. That’s why we want multiple vehicles, so that we have that option.”
In terms of the internal discussion about whether to keep working on getting the pair home or whether to switch to using the Dragon, Bowersox said, “We could take either path” and that the agency was “getting more serious” about evaluating other options than the Starliner.
NASA has insisted that the astronauts are not stranded and that they are not in any danger, and that they could use the Starliner in an emergency. For now, the pair are helping to perform jobs on the ISS, but they are also using up extra resources, so there is a balance to be struck in keeping them at the station. Also, presumably, the two astronauts who thought they were going to space for just over a week but have now been there for over two months would like to return home at some point — although astronauts are used to plans changing, especially on a test flight, and are unlikely to object to getting more time in space.
If the pair were to use a Dragon for the return leg of their trip, it would require NASA to send just two astronauts on the Crew-9 mission, set to launch in September, instead of the usual four. Then Wilmore and Williams could join them for their return to Earth in February next year. The issues with the Starliner have already caused the launch of the Crew-9 mission to be delayed from this month to next month.
NASA says it has reached out to SpaceX to discuss options for using the Dragon for the return of the Starliner crew, but the agency has not yet made an announcement about definite future plans.
