Astronauts stranded in space get horror news about when they'll be back on Earth (original) (raw)
Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who have already been trapped on the International Space Station for more than two months, may not come back to Earth for quite some time
Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore
Two Nasa astronauts stranded due to Boeing's faulty Starliner rocket have been told they could be stuck in space until next year.
Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who have already been trapped on the International Space Station for more than two months, may not come back to Earth until February 2025.
The agency is still evaluating options for safely bringing the astronauts back to Earth, and a plan has yet to be made. However, officials have now acknowledged more openly than before that they may decide to use Boeing's main rival, Elon Musk's SpaceX capsule instead.
"Our prime option is to return Butch and Suni on Starliner," Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said.
The pair were only supposed to spend a week in space (
Image:
Getty Images)
"However, we have done the requisite planning to make sure we have other options open, and so we have been working with SpaceX to ensure that they're ready to respond."
Wilmore and Williams arrived at the space station on June 6 on the first crewed test flight of Boeing's Starliner capsule. The initial plan called for them to stay in space for about a week.
However, problems with five of Starliner's thrusters and helium leaking from the capsule's propulsion system have stranded the astronauts there for more than two months as engineers on the ground gather data about the issues and attempt to troubleshoot.
Boeing's CST-100 Starliner spacecraft (
Image:
Getty Images)
The mission was designed to be the final step before the agency could certify Boeing to conduct routine crewed flights to and from the ISS. The fate of that process is now up in the air.
NASA did not offer any potential timeline for the astronauts' return if they travel back on Boeing's capsule, but Stich said that a final decision likely needs to be made by mid-August.
The Starliner fault is the latest setback to hit Boeing. The company was hired alongside Musk’s SpaceX a decade ago to ferry NASA’s astronauts to and from the space station.
After the space shuttles retired, the space agency wanted two competing US companies to do the job, so it paid £3.29 billion to Boeing and just over half that to SpaceX, which refashioned the capsule it was using to deliver station supplies.
But Boeing's airline division has been besieged by a series of problems that have left the firm subject to a US government enquiry following fears over the safety of their planes. Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed near Addis Ababa airport just six minutes after takeoff, killing all 157 on board in March 2019.
It was the second crash involving a Boeing 737 Max within five months. In October 2018, Lion Air Flight 610 was airborne for only 13 minutes before it plunged into the Java Sea off the coast of Indonesia, killing all 189 passengers and crew.
Flaws in the plane’s software design that took flight control away from the pilots without their knowledge based on data from a single sensor were found to have played a role in both planes crashing. Investigators concluded that an external device - the angle-of-attack sensor - sent the wrong data to the onboard computers, which responded by pushing down the nose.
Earlier this year, the families of the victims asked for prosecutions and a fine of almost £20 billion for "the deadliest corporate crime in US history". The relatives' lawyer, Paul Cassell, said the amount was "justified and clearly appropriate" given the "enormous human costs of Boeing's crimes."
The attorney said the US government should prosecute officials who were leading the airline maker at the time of the 737 Max crashes, including then-CEO Dennis Muilenburg. In all, 346 people were killed in the crashes.