Astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore must wait another five months before SpaceX can return them to Earth, NASA announced on Saturday. The agency cited safety concerns, stating that using Boeing's troubled new capsule is too risky. What was initially planned as a weeklong test flight will now extend to over eight months for the astronauts.
Williams and Wilmore have been stuck at the International Space Station since the beginning of June. A series of thruster failures and helium leaks in the Starliner disrupted their journey, leaving the astronauts in limbo while engineers ran tests and deliberated over the safest way to bring them home.
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NASA said the astronauts will be able to come back in a SpaceX spacecraft in February, which is at least five months from now. Their empty Starliner capsule will undock in early September and attempt to return on autopilot and touch down in the New Mexico desert.
“A test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine. And so the decision … is a commitment to safety. This has not been an easy decision, but it is absolutely the right one,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and associate administrator Jim Free said on Saturday.
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“I want you to know that Boeing has worked very hard with Nasa to get the necessary data to make this decision. We want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS,” Nelson added.