How Starliner Astronauts Will Return to Earth – Telemundo San Antonio (60)

The two astronauts who have been stranded on the International Space Station during a mission aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft since early June will remain in space until at least February 2025.

That’s what NASA decided Saturday, announcing it would ask SpaceX to bring home two astronauts who were unable to return to Earth in February next year after their Boeing spacecraft suffered multiple mid-flight problems.

Astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Sunni” Williams were scheduled to return to Earth in mid-June, just days before their launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but a propulsion failure and small helium leaks in the Starliner prevented their return.

How will they get back to Earth?

NASA’s decision to return astronauts to Earth The space agency is discussing how and when crew members can safely return.

NASA said it will offer two seats on SpaceX’s next launch, known as Crew-9, which will carry a new rotation of space station crew members to the orbiting outpost. By carrying two astronauts instead of the planned four, Wilmore and Williams will be able to return in the empty seats at the end of Crew-9’s mission in February.

Crew-9 is currently scheduled to launch on September 24 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, returning in February of next year.

Meanwhile, the trapped Starliner capsule will return to Earth without a crew, according to NASA.

The mission was scheduled to last about eight days.

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft carried two astronauts on its historic launch from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday.

NASA has already said that there is no date yet for the astronauts’ return, and that it is considering the option of their return in February 2025 in a SpaceX Dragon capsule, or even in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

After the space shuttles retired, NASA hired private companies to ferry astronauts to the space station, paying billions of dollars to Boeing and SpaceX.

The Starliner was Boeing’s first crewed test flight. The initial test flight, conducted in 2019 without a crew, never reached the space station due to a software glitch, and Boeing repeated the test in 2022. More problems have since emerged.

SpaceX has been flying astronauts since 2020. The company’s Falcon 9 rockets have been grounded for the past two weeks due to a failure in the upper stage of a satellite delivery mission. The longer the strike lasts, the more likely it is that future crewed flights will be delayed.