NASA announced that the Boeing Starliner, which transported astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the International Space Station in early June, will finally return to Earth. However, when the spacecraft returns, Williams and Wilmore will not be on it.
During the Starliner’s trip to the ISS, Boeing and NASA discovered helium leaks and problems with the spacecraft reaction control thrusters. These issues extended the astronauts’ originally scheduled eight-day mission, and their return has been postponed to next year.
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With the uncertainty surrounding Boeing’s Starliner abilities to safely return Williams and Wilmore, NASA announced that SpaceX will bring the astronauts home. They will fly back on a Dragon spacecraft as part of the SpaceX Crew-9 mission.
NASA scheduled the mission to launch no later than September 24, but Williams and Wilmore will continue supporting station research, maintenance and other activities through February 2025.
The New York Post reported that Boeing employees are frustrated by the decision and cited an anonymous Boeing worker who claimed that the Starliner could have brought the astronauts back safely.
The source said NASA did not want to “chance it” and went on to say, “They have their own PR issues and don’t need two dead astronauts. But we didn’t think that there would be dead astronauts.”
The Boeing worker added, “We have had so many embarrassments lately, we’re under a microscope. This just made it 100 times worse.”
Boeing also apparently is not pleased that SpaceX will be the one to carry the astronauts back to Earth. ‘
“We hate SpaceX,” the anonymous employee said. “We talk [expletive] about them all the time, and now they’re bailing us out.”
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