Two NASA astronauts who have had their mission to the International Space Station repeatedly extended due to problems with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft will need to wait at least another week before they learn how and when they are returning to Earth.
At a Wednesday news conference, NASA officials said a decision should come at the end of next week or the beginning of the following week.
“We’re reaching a point where that last week in August, we really should be making a call, if not sooner,” said NASA Associate Administrator Ken Bowersox when asked by CNN about when a decision has to be made.
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Among the issues is a limited supply of “consumables” — such as food — on board the space station.
NASA is currently weighing two options for the Starliner crew’s return to Earth. They include flying home on Starliner, which is the vehicle that brought them to the space station on Boeing’s first crewed test flight, or using seats on a SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle that was already slated to fly a routine staffing mission to the orbiting laboratory.
The US space agency has acknowledged there have been internal disagreements about what to do. Boeing representatives did not participate in the news conference. The aerospace giant has repeatedly expressed its confidence in Starliner’s ability to make the return trip.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — the two veteran NASA astronauts who are piloting the Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft — arrived at the space station on June 6, and they have now been in space roughly nine weeks longer than initially expected.
NASA officials made clear last week that SpaceX, Boeing’s rival under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, may be tapped to bring Williams and Wilmore home instead of Starliner. The move could potentially extend the astronauts’ stay on the space station by another six months, pushing their return into 2025, agency officials said in an August 7 news conference.
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