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Two months after the Boeing-built Starliner blasted off from Florida’s Space Coast on its first crewed flight, NASA announced that pilot Suni Williams, from the town of Needham in Norfolk County, and commander Butch Wilmore may not come home until February 2025.
In a mission update Wednesday, Aug. 7, NASA and Boeing leaders said they were still figuring out how to safely bring the pair back to Earth and that they may have to ride back on a SpaceX capsule instead.
“Our prime option is to return Butch and Suni on Starliner,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, told reporters. “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.”
Williams and Wilmore have been stuck in limbo aboard the International Space Station since Thursday, June 6, after NASA discovered numerous helium leaks and malfunctions with Starliner's thrusters.
Engineers in New Mexico spent weeks firing test engines in order to replicate how Starliner’s thrusters would have ignited, Boeing said at a press briefing held Thursday, July 25.
Should NASA send the pair home on a SpaceX capsule, mission managers could reprogram Starliner’s software enabling the spacecraft to undock from the space station and return to Earth without a crew.
A final decision was expected to be made by mid-August.
In the meantime, the stranded Williams and Wilmore are keeping themselves busy supporting the Expedition 71 crew with space station research and maintenance.
Both astronauts took part in vein scans using an ultrasound device on Monday, July 15, to help researchers understand how microgravity affects the human body, according to a mission update.
They took turns imaging each other’s neck, shoulder, and leg veins while doctors on the ground monitored in real-time. The pair also spent time taking inventory of the food stored on the space station.
Williams and Wilmore launched into orbit on Wednesday, June 5, for what was supposed to be a week-long expedition for Starliner. It was the first time a woman had been aboard a maiden flight of a crewed spacecraft.
The journey marks its last test before the craft goes into regular service in 2025 as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, aimed at providing reliable and cost-effective transportation to the space station. SpaceX began providing service in 2020.
NASA previously said that Starliner has enough fuel to remain in orbit until mid-August.
A 1983 graduate of Needham High School, Williams became an astronaut in August 1998 after more than a decade as a helicopter pilot in the US Navy. She made her first trip to the International Space Station aboard Space Shuttle Discovery in December 2006.
Throughout her career, she has logged more than 3,000 flight hours in 30 different aircraft. In 2019, her hometown of Needham honored her by naming its new elementary school Sunita L. Williams Elementary School.
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