The two astronauts were supposed to spend eight days in space, but will ultimately stay there for at least eight months, until February 2025 and SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission.
NASA acknowledged the existence of «tensions» in recent meetings with Boeing officials over how to bring back two astronauts stranded aboard the International Space Station (ISS) due to malfunctions in the U.S. aerospace giant’s Starliner capsule. The U.S. space agency has denied media reports that the meetings were punctuated by shouting.
NASA announced at the end of August that it was now Boeing’s competitor, SpaceX, that would be responsible for bringing Butch Wilmore and Sunni Williams back to Earth. The series of difficulties encountered on the Starliner led to this difficult decision not to use this ship for the return mission. A snub for Boeing, already bogged down by repeated setbacks on its airliners. The two astronauts were supposed to spend eight days in space, but will ultimately stay there for at least eight months, until February 2025 and SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission.
Boeing says it is confident of its ship’s safety
Boeing has repeatedly stated publicly that it is confident in the safety of its spacecraft. The absence of company executives from recent NASA press conferences had fueled speculation that there were differences with the space agency. According to the New York Postciting sources familiar with the matter, recent meetings between senior officials from both sides have often ended in quarrels accompanied by shouting matches.
NASA’s commercial human spaceflight program manager, Steve Stich, said he wouldn’t describe the meetings as heated, but that they included “tense technical discussions”. “Any time you are in a meeting of this importance, where there is this kind of decision (to be made), there is a certain form of tension in the room”he said. He said that despite Boeing’s certainty about their projections, the NASA team “was not comfortable” to proceed, “due to the uncertainty around the model”.
Starliner is due to detach from the ISS shortly after 22:00 GMT on Friday before beginning its descent without a crew and landing in the western United States on Saturday morning. Ten years ago, NASA ordered a new spacecraft from Boeing and SpaceX each to transport its astronauts to the ISS. With two vehicles, it wants to not be left without a solution in the event of a problem with one or the other. But Elon Musk’s company has largely beaten Boeing and has been acting alone as the American space taxi for four years now.
