NASA Reveals Plan to Return Stranded Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to Earth
A plan to bring the two NASA astronauts stranded on the International Space Station back home to Earth has been unveiled.
The government agency announced Aug. 24 that Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will return on a Crew Dragon capsule early next year. The vessel, made by Elon Musk's SpaceX company, is due to travel to the ISS in September with four astronauts as part of a routine mission. Two of its seats will be kept empty for Butch and Suni, who will travel back to Earth on it in February 2025.
"NASA has decided that Butch and Suni will return with Crew-9 next February and that Starliner will return uncrewed," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at a press conference, "The decision to keep Butch and Suni on board the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is the result of a commitment to safety. Our core value is safety and it is our North Star."
The two had traveled to the orbiting space station on a Boeing Starliner capsule on June 5. Their inaugural test mission, which was originally set to last eight days—experienced thruster failures and helium leaks before docking safely, prompting NASA to postpone the pair's return to Earth by months and discuss whether to fix the spacecraft and bring them back on it or use SpaceX's.
NASA said in a statement that Starliner must return to Earth before the Crew-9 mission launches to ensure a docking port is available on the ISS.
Butch and Suni's Starliner flight marked the first time the vessel had carried a crew and NASA had hoped to certify the spacecraft for routine flights had the mission gone off without a hitch. Boeing plans to continue to work to fix its problems once it returns to Earth, Nelson said.
"I want you to know that Boeing has worked very hard with NASA to get the necessary data to make this decision," he told reporters. "We want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boing Starliners will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS."
In 2019, Starliner failed a test to launch to the ISS without a crew. During another attempt in 2022, it encountered thruster problems.
"We have had mistakes done in the past. We lost two space shuttles as a result of there not being a culture in which information could come forward," Nelson said. "Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and even at its most routine. And a test flight, by nature, is neither safe, nor routine."
Earlier this month, the families of Butch, 61, and Suni, 58, shared insight into how the astronauts are dealing with their extended time on the ISS and the uncertainty about their return.
Suni's husband, Michael Williams, told The Wall Street Journal that he didn’t think she was disappointed to wind up spending more time at the space station, adding, "That's her happy place."
Butch's wife, Deanna Wilmore, told Knoxville, Tenn. TV station WVLT that his family didn't expect him back until "February or March" and said her husband "just takes it knowing the Lord's in control and that since the Lord's in control of it, that he's content where he is."
And the astronauts keep in touch with their loved ones and share images from their mission as they continue their scientific experiments and maintenance tasks on board the ISS, which is also inhabited by the seven-person U.S. and Russian crew of Expedition 71.
"It is so cool. He gives us a lot of Earth views," Butch's daughter Daryn, 19, told WVLT. "I especially like seeing the sunset."
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