Astronauts return delayed; two will stay on space station until February

The damaged Boeing Starliner will be returning to Earth, but will not bring back the two astronauts who launched onboard the spacecraft in June. Instead, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore won’t be coming home until February.

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Williams and Wilmore had embarked on a trip that was supposed to be about a week, but there were helium leaks and issues with the Starliner’s thrusters, keeping the pair onboard the International Space Station for longer than planned, Fox News reported.

The astronauts will come home on a SpaceX Crew-9 Dragon mission that will launch no earlier than Sept. 24. The mission has to reduce the launch crew from four to two to make room for Williams and Wilmore. It will also deliver extra cargo, including two Dragon-specific spacesuits for the astronauts whose original suits are not compatible with the SpaceX equipment.

The Starliner will undock from the ISS and return to Earth autonomously in September. The spacecraft can fly without a crew and has completed two missions before June’s trip.

“Spaceflight is risky — even at its safest and even at its most routine — and a test flight, by nature, is neither safe nor routine, and so the decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is a result of a commitment to safety,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, according to NBC News .

The decision to use SpaceX to bring Williams and Wilmore was unanimous by NASA officials and took into account the deadly explosions of the Challenger and Columbia space shuttles, The Washington Post reported.

“There was just too much uncertainty in the prediction of the thrusters,” NASA Commerical Crew Program Manager Steve Stich said, according to NBC News . “If we had a model, [if] we had a way to accurately predict what the thrusters would do for the undock and all the way through the de-orbit burn, through the separation sequence, I think we would have taken a different course of action.”

Boeing recently said that it would be safe to bring the astronauts home on Starliner.

“We continue to focus, first and foremost, on the safety of the crew and spacecraft. We are executing the mission as determined by NASA, and we are preparing the spacecraft for a safe and successful uncrewed return,” Boeing said

Five of Starliner’s 28 thrusters stopped firing on June 6. Four of them came back online. There were also several small helium leaks in the spacecraft’s propulsion system, the Post reported.