After ‘Dreamliner’, ‘Starliner’ is now also causing problems: the space transporter of the American aerospace company Boeing and NASA is not ready for use. That is why two astronauts now have to stay in space considerably longer than planned.
The American space agency NASA will not be able to take the two astronauts, who have been on board the International Space Station (ISS) for considerably longer than originally planned due to problems with the “Starliner”, until next February and with another spacecraft, the “SpaceX’s”. Crew Dragon will return to Earth. NASA announced this on Saturday at a press conference.
Return transportation with SpaceX transporter
This decision was made for safety reasons, said NASA boss Bill Nelson. According to this plan, NASA astronaut Suni Williams and her colleague Barry Wilmore will return in February 2025 with the “Crew Dragon” of Elon Musk’s company SpaceX.
The launch of “Crew 9” with the “Crew Dragon”, currently scheduled for September, would then only take place with two astronauts instead of four. Williams and Wilmore are expected to be part of this crew and return to Earth with their two colleagues in 2025. This means that the crisis-plagued ‘Starliner’ will fly back to Earth without a crew.
A week turned into months
Williams and Wilmore arrived at the ISS in early June during the first manned test flight of the “Starliner.” The mission was originally only scheduled for about a week, but then the “Starliner” encountered numerous technical problems, including with the engines and helium leaks.
NASA then spent a long time considering whether it would be better to return the two astronauts to Earth with the ‘Starliner’ or rather – months later – with the ‘Crew Dragon’.
‘Starliner’ was intended as an alternative to Musk’s transporter
The ‘Starliner’ of the American aerospace company Boeing is a partially reusable spacecraft consisting of a capsule for the crew, about three meters high, and a service module. Unlike SpaceX’s “Crew Dragon” it does not land on water, but on Earth.
The spacecraft first took off for a manned test flight from Cape Canaveral Spaceport in Florida in early June, after years of delays. In May 2022, the Starliner completed its first successful unmanned flight to the ISS, spending four days there. In the future, it will be used as an alternative to the Crew Dragon space capsule to transport astronauts to the ISS.
Source: Krone
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