On Saturday, NASA announced it had chosen SpaceX’s Dragon capsule to bring back two astronauts who had been living and working in space for months.
The Dallas Express previously reported that Boeing’s Starliner launched successfully earlier this summer, with two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, aboard.
Boeing’s spacecraft, which had the objective of docking at the International Space Station and safely bringing back the crew in just over a week, faced several issues that prevented it from carrying out the return trip to Earth.
Now, NASA’s announcement results in the autonomous Starliner spacecraft returning to Earth without any crew, The Washington Post reported. Consequently, the astronauts’ planned eight-day stay on the space station will be approximately eight months long.
Here is more of what The Post reported on this out-of-this-world story:
NASA announced Saturday that it will use SpaceX’s Dragon capsule to bring home two astronauts stuck in space for months, because the agency does not have confidence in Boeing’s troubled Starliner capsule.
“It was just too much risk for the crew,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager.
The highly anticipated decision, one of the most consequential by the space agency in years, is a devastating blow to Boeing, which had argued vehemently that Starliner was safe even though it suffered a series of thruster problems and helium leaks as it brought NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore to the International Space Station in early June.
The decision means that the autonomous Starliner spacecraft will return to Earth, likely in early September, without anyone on board and that Williams and Wilmore will have their stay on the space station, originally intended to last eight days, extended to about eight months — the next Dragon return flight is scheduled for February.