Boeing’s first astronaut mission ended on Friday with an empty capsule landing. The two test pilots are still left behind right now in space. They are going to be there until next year because NASA ruled that coming home right now is too unsafe. Six hours after departing the International Space Station, Starliner parachuted into New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range, descending on autopilot through the desert in the dark.
For months they have been trying to figure out the return of Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. The engineers struggle to understand the capsule’s problems. Boeing made a decision that it was safe for the two to come home but NASA overruled it and decided it was in fact not safe for the two to come back to Earth yet. Space X won’t be able to launch until the end of this month and then there is traveling time. The two won’t be able to come home until February. That is more than 8 months of them being up there and this was supposed to be a quick trip.
Wilmore and Williams should have flown back on the Starliner by mid-June, a week after launching it in. Their ride to the space station was trouble. They were met with thruster trouble and helium loss. That is why NASA decided that it was too risky to come back home on the Starliner. NASA feels even though the Starliner made it safe back home that it was the right decision for them not to ride back on it.
The Starliner’s crew demo had a journey filled with delays and many setbacks. After the space shuttles retired over a decade ago, NASA ended up hiring Boeing and SpaceX for an orbital taxi service. Boeing had so many problems with the first test flight with no one aboard in 2019. The 2022 edits of the shuttle had uncovered so many more flaws with the Starline ship and the repairs topped 1 billion dollars.
A quote from Jewel Dezard, “I agree with NASA’s choice to leave the two up in space until it is safe for the two to come back to earth.” This shows how in general this ship has had so many issues, and NASA had many reasons to hold the two up in the space station. It just isn’t safe for the two to come home right now. A quote from Sarah Singh, “I feel the smartest choice is to listen to NASA and not Boeing and wait for NASA. The two astronauts will stay until February, and they’ll come home on SpaceX. It will be the dragon capsule. This is the smartest option just because the helium leaks caused the craft’s thrusters to malfunction.
