Why time is running short to decide Starliner astronauts’ ride home

After Butch Wilmore got settled into the commander seat of Starliner earlier this summer, he thanked the people preparing to blast him and his crewmate Suni Williams into space. 

“Outstanding. Nice job, guys,” the NASA astronaut said before a launch attempt that ultimately scrubbed. “We’ll see you in a couple of weeks — or longer.” 

The launch commentators were amused. 

“Butch, planning on staying up there longer,” said Jim May, a Boeing engineer, restating Wilmore’s radio communication. “Maybe he’ll do a couple of extra manual piloting demos while he’s around there.” 

A few days later, the two astronauts indeed launched to the International Space Station, and those earlier words reveal their state of mind before the flight: They knew their planned week in space might be more than that. But the words also foreshadowed the rest of the tortuous mission. 

For more than two months, Wilmore and Williams have been in limbo 250 miles above Earth. Starliner, the new Boeing spaceship they test-piloted, experienced elusive propulsion issues on the journey. Now the U.S. space agency must decide whether to send them home in their test capsule or make complicated arrangements for them to ride a different spaceship — one built and controlled by Boeing’s competitor, SpaceX. Boeing, for its part, firmly believes Starliner can handle the job.

Switching to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon is not an ideal solution for NASA, either. The change would have a cascading effect on launch pads and the flight schedule. 

“We’re reaching a point where that last week in August, we really should be making a call, if not sooner,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator of space operations.

Aside from the general concern for Wilmore and Williams’ health — their bodies receive excess radiation and bone deterioration in space — the agency faces a ticking clock with the manifest. 

The U.S. segment of the space station has four ports — two for spaceships and two for cargo freighters. Right now one SpaceX capsule and Starliner occupy both crew docks. There’s no interoperability between U.S. ships and Russian ports, and cargo spots aren’t equipped for passenger craft. In short, the parking lot is full. 

NASA already postponed the next crew rotation one month to buy some time to figure out the path forward for Starliner, but the delayed SpaceX capsule will be on its way to the station on Sept. 24. Starliner will have to undock before then, whether with human pilots or robotically, to accommodate the other SpaceX spaceship. 

In addition to logistics at the station, NASA has had to consider how changes would affect operations on the ground. By delaying the next SpaceX Crew-9 flight, for example, the agency has had to scramble to get certification to move the launch to a different pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Otherwise, Crew-9 would interfere with preparations for the launch of Europa Clipper, a robotic science mission set to study one of Jupiter’s moons. 

All the shuffling leaves a fairly tight window in September for Starliner to leave. If NASA chooses not to send the Starliner astronauts home in Starliner, they’ll remain at the station until February 2025, turning their original eight-day visit into an eight-month layover. 

“At some point, we need to bring those folks home, and get back to a normal crew size on the ISS,” Bowersox said. 

Though astronauts are trained for unanticipated changes in departures and arrivals, an extended stay in space will mean the two will be separated from their families for more than half a year.

Even astronauts, who are sometimes viewed as superhuman, can succumb to the tedium of life away from Earth. NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, who recently spent 371 days at the space station because his Russian ride home sprung a coolant leak, said it was a stressful ordeal. 

“The psychological factor was more of a factor than I expected,” he said then.

Wilmore and Williams have been put to work since they arrived. In addition to diagnostic tests on Starliner, they have assisted in other ways at the orbiting laboratory. Both have taken up deferred maintenance tasks — such as assembling a backup urine processor dubbed “Frankenpump” — that at times have made them seem like glorified space janitors. 

Having extra crew on hand to pick up slack has been a perk for NASA, but it also has its drawbacks. More people in orbit means extra mouths to feed, and extra carbon dioxide to filter out of the air. Time on exercise machines has to be meticulously managed to ensure everyone stays fit in the weightless environment. 

Getting Starliner through the testing phase has been a relentless battle for Boeing, though its representatives have not always been forthcoming on why the program has suffered so many setbacks. A string of issues has spanned a decade. 

After the Space Shuttle retired in 2011, NASA hitched all of its rides on Russian rockets to the space station, costing the United States tens of millions of dollars per ride. Some considered it a national embarrassment. 

NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX to build commercial spaceships to carry astronauts to and from the station in 2014. While SpaceX’s capsule went into service four years ago, Boeing’s Starliner has yet to obtain certification for regular flight operations. NASA never intended to have all its eggs in Elon Musk‘s basket and says Starliner is still crucial to have as a backup. 

In a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Boeing said Starliner’s problems cost the company $125 million in the last quarter, with a likelihood that it would “record additional losses in future periods.”

When asked which way Wilmore and Williams’ wanted to travel back to Earth, Joe Acaba, NASA’s chief astronaut, said it wasn’t up to them. 

“This is not really a preference thing,” he told reporters on Aug. 14. “They are going to wait for us to analyze the data and to come up with the decision, and, again, they will do what we ask.”