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what to know about nasa's 'stranded' astronauts, due back on earth next february
barry wilmore and sunita williams flew a boeing starliner to the space station for a planned 10-day mission, but complications arose
aug 8 2024
3 minute read
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two astronauts who flew to the international space station in june for a 10-day mission may not return until sometime next year, nasa officials said in their most recent update on the troubled starliner mission. here’s the latest.
who are the astronauts and what is starliner?
the two members of the crew flight test (cft) of the starliner mission are barry e. “butch” wilmore and sunita williams. they are both graduates of the u.s. naval test pilot school, and both have been to space twice before. wilmore flew on space shuttle atlantis to an 11-day mission at the iss in 2009, and spent almost six months on the station in 2014-2015. williams flew to the space station in 2007 and again in 2012, racking up almost one year in space between those two missions.
starliner is boeing’s crew capsule, designed to ferry astronauts into low-earth orbit. announced in 2010, it was originally planned to fly as early as 2015, but delays have plagued its development.
the first uncrewed orbital test flight happened in december 2019 but was deemed a partial failure as it did not reach the iss. the next such flight did not happen until may 2022. after numerous launch delays, wilmore and williams finally took to the skies on june 5 of this year — more than two months ago, for what was to have been a 10-day test flight.
what went wrong after the launch?
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starliner had a helium leak in one of its subsystems that was noticed before liftoff but was deemed a manageable problem. but it also had thruster problems once in orbit, and nasa scientists have not yet been able to diagnose exactly what went wrong with them, how to fix them, or whether they pose a threat during a return to earth.
why are they stranded at the space station?
first, nasa has taken great pains to point out that they’re not . the space station has two functioning spaceships that can bring people back to earth — a spacex crew dragon and a russian soyuz. in fact, on june 26, when space debris made a close pass by the station, the nine astronauts onboard sheltered in the crew dragon, the soyuz and the starliner, ready to return to earth using all three in the event of a cataclysm.
however, nasa would rather not bring them back on the starliner if it doesn’t have to. “we’re in a kind of a new situation here, in that we’ve got multiple options,” ken bowersox, associate administrator for nasa’s space operations mission directorate, said during a briefing this week. “we don’t just have to bring a crew back on starliner, for example. we could bring them back on another vehicle.”
that vehicle could be another crew dragon. this week, nasa announced that the next crewed spacex flight, planned for aug. 18, will now launch on sept. 24. and instead of carrying four astronauts to the iss, it will bring only two.
that will allow wilmore and williams to ride back on the capsule’s two empty seats, probably next february. if that happens, their planned 10-day mission will have stretched to something like eight months. that’s longer than the 210 days (roughly seven months) the starliner is rated to remain flight-worthy once docked at the iss, but it does mean they might still come home on it before that deadline.
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boeing’s starliner spacecraft, which launched astronauts butch wilmore and suni williams to the international space station, docked to the harmony module’s forward port on july 3, 2024, seen from a window on the spacex dragon endeavour spacecraft docked to the adjacent port.
nasa
do they have enough food, water and oxygen?
yes. the iss receives regular uncrewed resupply flights — four this year to date — and also has a four-month contingency supply of food and oxygen, so there’s no danger of anyone starving or running out of air. it even has spacesuits on board for wilmore and williams in case they need to step outside. they don’t have sleeping quarters — the station has seven, and there are nine people aboard — but it’s easy enough to just bunk down on the floor. or ceiling. plus, there are three toilets on the iss.
finally, the two newcomers are fully trained in space station activities, because nasa likes to train people for every eventuality, including this one.
has this ever happened before?
it has. frank rubio holds the record for the longest spaceflight by an american, after a meteor strike in december 2022 damaged his soyuz capsule, rendering it unfit to return him to earth. (it did make an uncrewed landing.) as a result, a scheduled six-month mission was extended to 371 days. he eventually returned to earth on a replacement soyuz last september.
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