Starliner could leave astronauts stranded on ISS until 2025

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If you thought the Boeing Starliner fiasco couldn’t get any worse, well, you’re in for some surprising news. It’s been weeks since Starliner took two astronauts up to the International Space Station. The spacecraft was expected to bring the astronauts back after a few days, and yet they continue to remain stranded there. Now, the latest updates from NASA seem to suggest those astronauts won’t be brought home until 2025 at the earliest.

If Boeing was really hoping to be a good contender as a competitor to SpaceX, then they’re really starting things off on the wrong foot. I mean, it was bad enough that the spacecraft had so many issues leading up to its first crew launch. But the fact that they have continued to leave astronauts stranded aboard the ISS because of those issues is actually just insane to me.

For weeks now, NASA and Boeing have both downplayed exactly how bad the Starliner issues are. Now, though, it seems the space agency is finally coming clean about the actual complexity of the Starliner fiasco. This could extend the astronauts’ original eight days in orbit to sometime in 2025, when a spacecraft built by SpaceX will bring them back down to Earth.

There’s also a possibility that the two astronauts could come back down on another SpaceX spacecraft sooner—but NASA’s associate administrator says they could take either path at the moment. This announcement, of course, just adds more embarrassment to the entire ordeal, which hopefully will see Boeing sent back to the drawing board to figure some things out.

Unfortunately, no final decision on exactly how to approach the issue has been made just yet. But at least NASA has given up on trying to send them back home on Starliner—hopefully. Personally, I’m not sure I’d trust getting back on Starliner to come back home with the issues that they’re experiencing. However, NASA does appear to be setting the spacecraft up for an uncrewed return. So, hopefully, Boeing can figure out what went wrong and fix it.