Boeing has decided to postpone the return flight of NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams to allow time to further review the data and safety systems of the Starliner spacecraft.
The Starliner vehicle was originally scheduled to leave the International Space Station on June 26 to return a Boeing test mission crew to land over the desert in the United States, but NASA and Boeing decided to postpone the return flight. No new date has been set yet.
“We’re taking the time to use data to guide our decision-making,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager. Addressing the helium leak and propulsion system performance on the vehicle is similar to what we did with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon on the Demo-2 mission, which was in space more than two months ago.
Stich emphasized that the Starliner spacecraft is still working well in orbit around Earth. It will remain attached to the International Space Station. This will allow the station crew to use their spacewalks to perform maintenance on the exterior of the station, and to give Boeing’s mission team time to collect data from the spacecraft to further improve and develop the system.
The two NASA astronauts are not “trapped” in space, but rather live with the mission's seven other crew members on the International Space Station, where they have food, drinking water and a survival system. Enough to accommodate a Starliner crew. Information contained in the recent press conference stated that the two astronauts can remain on the space station until mid-August. Without affecting the normal operation of the station
pointing to:
