Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — two veteran NASA astronauts piloting the first crewed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft — have now been in space for 63 days, roughly seven weeks longer than initially expected. There is still no clear return date in sight. Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft that launched NASA’s Crew Flight Test astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station is pictured docked to the Harmony module’s forward port.
As analysis to understand the issues that Starliner experienced en route to the International Space Station continues, NASA is exploring various contingency options, the space agency confirmed during a news conference Wednesday. Those contingencies include keeping Williams and Wilmore on the orbiting laboratory for another six months and bringing them home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle in 2025. CNN confirmed on Tuesday that NASA has not yet started a “flight readiness review” for the Starliner crew’s return from the space station.
The agency had said on July 26 that it would begin that process in the first couple days of August. But Boeing and NASA teams are still working on a potential return date as officials evaluate testing data and conduct analyses about the propulsion issues and helium leaks that hampered the first leg of the Starliner capsule’s flight. The ground testing that mission teams carried out in New Mexico as it worked to understand the problems led to surprising results, Ste.