If NASA’s stranded astronauts were to secure seats on an upcoming SpaceX mission, they’d have to wait another five months to return.
NASA admitted during a live conference today that it still isn’t confident enough in Boeing’s Starliner to safely return its two stranded astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, from the International Space Station.
The pair have been stuck on the orbital outpost since early June, but ongoing technical issues plaguing Starliner have pushed back their return date indefinitely.
And even with NASA’s contingency plan of having the pair be sent back on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft in place, their stay could be massively extended.
According to the head of NASA’s commercial crew program Steve Stich, if the pair were to secure two seats on the upcoming SpaceX Crew-9 mission, they’d have to wait until February 2025 to make it back.
In other words, their trip to the ISS may have just been extended from just two weeks to just shy of eight months — an unexpected and considerable delay caused by Boeing’s technical difficulties.
NASA also confirmed rumors that the agency was considering freeing up two out of four seats on an upcoming SpaceX mission to the ISS to make space for Williams and Wilmore’s return. The mission was initially slated for August 18, but has since been pushed back to September 24 to buy the agency more time to figure out what to do.
In short, the agency is still keeping all of its options open.
