NASA Delays Next Astronaut Launch While Figuring Out How To Bring Current Ones Home

The ongoing troubles of the Boeing Starliner capsule are affecting the schedule of launches to the International Space Station (ISS). The starship is on its first crewed flight test and it has been a partial success. While it flew to orbit with no issues, it experienced delays and once on approach, thrusters malfunctioned. Since then, NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams have been conducting tests and found jobs to perform on the ISS.

The ISS is divided into two sections: the Russian Orbital Segment (ROS) put together by Roscosmos, and the US Orbital Segment (USOS), built by NASA, JAXA, ESA, and CSA. There are two docks on the US segment: one has Starliner and the other one has Crew-8’s Crew Dragon capsule. So one has to vacate before the next Crew Dragon gets there.

Usually, there are several days of overlap between the two crewed missions, handing over responsibilities, passing on advice, working plans, etc. Crew-9 was supposed to launch on August 18 and Crew-8 was supposed to land on August 27. Now, Crew-9 won’t launch earlier than September 24.

“This adjustment allows more time for mission managers to finalize return planning for the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test currently docked to the orbiting laboratory,” NASA wrote in a statement . “NASA and Boeing continue to evaluate the spacecraft’s readiness, and no decisions have been made regarding Starliner’s return.”

As it stands, the best possible option is for Wilmore and Williams to stay in orbit. While the mission has become much longer than the original one week, the space station has plenty of provisions to accommodate two extra astronauts for as long as they need – and it is immensely cheaper than mounting a rescue mission with an empty capsule.

That approach is not unheard of. That’s how cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, together with astronaut Frank Rubio , got back to Earth when their Soyuz capsule was damaged by a micrometeorite in orbit. It is unclear at this time if NASA will do that.

Starliner has been marred by delays. The initial plan anticipated the first crewed test in 2017 but it was postponed multiple times until it got to August 2023, and then to May 2024. The delay this year was to fix a problem with the parachute system and wiring harnesses. On May 6, the launch was scrubbed two hours before liftoff. More delays were accumulated and another launch was scrubbed on June 1, due to a faulty power supply.