NASA announced Saturday that it will ask SpaceX for help in bringing home two astronauts who have been stranded at the International Space Station since early June after their Boeing spacecraft experienced various problems during flight.
The decision to return astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to Earth in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule rather than the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they launched into orbit in ended months of speculation and tension within the space agency about how and when the two crew members could return safely. The mission was scheduled to last about eight days.
“Space flight is risky, even at its safest and most routine, and a test flight is inherently neither safe nor routine. So the decision to keep Butch and Suni at the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home without a crew is a commitment to safety,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at a news conference Saturday.
The Starliner drama was a major setback for Boeing’s space ambitions, adding to a years-long struggle to get the capsule off the ground and compete with rival company SpaceX. Even before Wilmore and Williams launched in June, the Starliner program was more than $1.5 billion over budget and years behind schedule.
Top NASA officials, including Nelson, gathered Saturday at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to conduct a formal review based on the results of tests conducted in orbit and on the ground.
While the agency has finally decided how to bring the astronauts back, their return trip won’t be immediate. Instead, Wilmore and Williams will remain at the space station for about six more months before flying home in February.
NASA said it will vacate two seats on an upcoming SpaceX launch that will take a new rotation of space station crews to the orbiting base, known as Crew-9. Wilmore and Williams will be able to return to the empty seats at the end of the Crew-9 mission in February, carrying two astronauts instead of the planned four.
The Crew-9 flight is currently scheduled to launch on September 24 from NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Meanwhile, the troubled Starliner capsule will likely return to Earth without a crew in early September, according to NASA.
Boeing said in a statement following the announcement: “We remain focused on the safety of the crew and spacecraft first and foremost. We are executing the mission as outlined by NASA and preparing the spacecraft for a safe and successful uncrewed return.”
NASA Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich said that Boeing officials were confident in the spacecraft and that the decision to continue with SpaceX was made unanimously by NASA officials.
“There was a lot of uncertainty in the prediction of the thrusters,” Stich said. “If we had a model, [if] “If we had a way to accurately predict what the thrusters were going to do during separation and the deorbit burn, during separation, I think we would have taken a different course of action.”
NASA’s uncertainty in recent weeks stood in stark contrast to Boeing’s public message, which said tests in orbit and on the ground showed its Starliner capsule was safe to bring astronauts home.
Over the past month, Boeing officials have not attended press briefings held by NASA to discuss the Starliner mission. Boeing has been posting details about the flight’s status on the company’s website, but no mission updates have been issued since Aug. 2. Boeing said in a statement earlier this month that it “remains confident in the Starliner spacecraft and its ability to safely return with a crew.”
Wilmore and Williams arrived at the space station on June 6. As they approached the orbital outpost, five of the Starliner’s thrusters failed, causing a delay of about an hour in the docking process. Separately, mission managers also detected a helium leak from the capsule’s propulsion system—a problem that was known before the spacecraft’s launch but worsened during the flight.
Engineers from NASA and Boeing spent weeks analyzing problems using a test engine built for future Starliner flights. Mission managers also conducted two “hot fire tests” in space, which involved firing the capsule’s thrusters in short bursts while it remained docked to the space station.
Wilmore and Williams launched to the International Space Station on June 5 on the first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule. The mission, expected to last a little over a week, was a major test flight for Boeing and the last major step before NASA certifies the Starliner spacecraft to regularly ferry astronauts to and from the space station.
It’s not yet clear how NASA will proceed with the certification process, nor is it clear how the space agency will evaluate Starliner’s performance during a crewed test flight.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has been ferrying NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station since 2020.
Both Boeing and SpaceX developed their space capsules as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, an initiative launched in 2011 to support private companies building new spacecraft to carry astronauts to low-Earth orbit after the agency’s space shuttles were retired.
NASA’s deputy administrator, Jim Free, praised the teams at NASA and Boeing, saying the work done over the past few months will inform future missions.
“We are a learning organization,” he said. “We will learn from this effort so that our crew and their families who are at the top of the pyramid on these missions can continue to know that we got it done and we always did our best.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com