Sunday, August 25, 2024-The two Boeing Starliner astronauts who have been stranded in space for 80 days will stay for another six months, NASA officials announced Saturday, August 24 in a worrying statement.
Over two months ago, Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams went on a NASA mission to space with Boeing Starliner spaceship after NASA snubbed Elon Musk's Space X to give a multi billion dollar deal to Boeing for space missions.
After the space ship
developed faults, NASA now says the astronauts are now expected to return to
Earth in February using Elon Musk's Space X's spaceship, while the Boeing
Starliner will be brought back to earth unmanned.
Veteran astronauts,
Wilmore and Williams launched aboard Boeing’s Starliner back on June 5, the
maiden crewed voyage for the spacecraft — for what was supposed to be an
eight-day mission docked to the International Space Station.
The test flight, however, encountered thruster failures and helium leaks so serious that NASA kept the capsule parked as engineers tried to find a solution.
Today makes it the pair’s 80th day in space. Wilmore and Williams will return as part of a SpaceX Dragon Crew-9 mission, officials said.
The decision to bring the astronauts to earth in February
was the result of a “commitment to safety,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson
explained.
But NASA is still “100 percent” certain the Starliner will launch
with an astronaut crew again in the future, Nelson added.
“This has not been an easy
decision, but it is absolutely the right one,” NASA Associate Administrator
James Free said.
LIVE: We're discussing NASA's @BoeingSpace Crew Flight Test following the completion of today's Agency Test Flight Readiness Review. Listen in for the latest #Starliner updates. https://t.co/M2ODFmLuTj
— NASA (@NASA) August 24, 2024
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