Marcia Dunn, AP reporter: Almost all roads to space begin here in Cape Canaveral. Haya Panjwani, AP correspondent: That’s Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press’…
Marcia Dunn, AP reporter: Almost all roads to space begin here in Cape Canaveral.
Haya Panjwani, AP correspondent: That’s Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press’ space writer. She’s following Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams’ return home from the International Space Station.
PANJWANI: I’m Haya Panjwani. On this episode of “The Story Behind the AP Story,” we’re unpacking how the two astronauts got stuck up there in the first place and what they’ve done in the last few months at the station.
DUNN: So Butch and Suni became the first people, the first astronauts, to strap into a Boeing Starliner capsule and be launched into space. This was last June, June 5th, 2024. They launched aboard the Starliner on what was supposed to be an eight-day trip to the space station and back. Here we are, more than nine months later. This eight-day mission has turned into a nine-month marathon for them.
So, Butch and Suni strap in on June 5th. Launch goes off great from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. I’m there watching, watching the rocket fly. They get to orbit safely. All is well, except the next day, as they’re going into dock with the International Space Station as planned, the thrusters start to fail. Helium is leaking. There had been some helium leaks prior to liftoff, but nobody thought it would morph into something bigger and worse.
These two are test pilots. Suni’s a helicopter pilot by trade. Butch is a fighter pilot, combat pilot, both military skill people. They temporarily had to take control to try to get the thrusters back in business so that they could make a fully automated docking at the space station. They got docked to the space station, and months started rolling by.
We’re now into the summer of 2024. Because engineers on the ground could just not exactly figure out what had happened. Well, what went wrong with the Starliner? Why did all these thrusters malfunction? What’s the deal with all the helium leaking out of it? Now, they were safe at the space station, right? And they didn’t need the Starliner at this point, but to come home. And because NASA was worried that it could be dangerous for them to get aboard this craft with these troubles, they kept them up there while they kept investigating the situation here on the ground.
This dragged on for months. And finally, NASA told Boeing, that’s it. Done. You know, you bring that capsule back empty. We’ll see if it survives entry and it lands OK.
