Nasa selects Musk's SpaceX to rescue astronauts marooned in space

By Loren Grush

NASA selected Elon Musk’s SpaceX to bring home the US astronauts who were forced to extend their stay at the International Space Station because of major technical issues with Boeing Co.’s capsule.
 

Boeing’s spacecraft will return without people on board, the US space agency said during a Saturday news conference announcing its decision. 

The contingency plan means that NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams will hitch a ride home on SpaceX’s rival Crew Dragon capsule during a mission slated to launch in late September. That would put them back on US soil in February, when that capsule is slated to return and months later than originally planned.

“The decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is a result of a commitment to safety,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said of the decision, citing the loss of two Space Shuttle crews in the agency’s past. 

The two astronauts, who arrived at the ISS on Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner test flight on June 6, were originally to remain for roughly a week. They’re now facing an eight-month-stay in orbit, as NASA is no longer comfortable bringing them back home on Boeing’s craft. 

This is another significant blow to the Starliner program. In 2019, Boeing botched an uncrewed test flight of the capsule that failed to reach the space station as planned. This was followed by years of delays and glitches that cost the company roughly $1.6 billion in additional charges.

As a result, Boeing was roughly seven years late in launching its first crew on Starliner, while fellow NASA partner SpaceX continued to launch NASA crews routinely on its Crew Dragon spacecraft. Now Boeing must face the embarrassment of having its rival carry home astronauts that Starliner was supposed to carry back.

NASA made its decision against a backdrop of a close US presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Harris is chair of the National Space Council, so the effects of the decision may reverberate in the weeks before the election.

The stakes of the decision were high regardless of world events. “Frankly, every call NASA makes has similar potential ramifications when you’re dealing with human spaceflight,” said Lori Garver, the former deputy administrator of NASA. “Obviously the worst thing would be loss of crew.”

Boeing now faces questions about its future with NASA. Starliner’s crewed flight to the station was part of a critical test flight to determine whether the spacecraft could regularly carry people to and from the ISS. Like Musk’s SpaceX, Boeing holds a contract with NASA to routinely bring crews to the space station until its planned retirement in 2030.