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From Futurism: NASA admitted during a live conference today that it still isn’t confident enough in Boeing’s Starliner to safely return its two stranded astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, from the International Space Station.
The pair have been stuck on the orbital outpost since early June, but ongoing technical issues plaguing Starliner have pushed back their return date indefinitely.
And even with NASA’s contingency plan of having the pair be sent back on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft in place, their stay could be massively extended.
According to the head of NASA’s commercial crew program Steve Stich, if the pair were to secure two seats on the upcoming SpaceX Crew-9 mission, they’d have to wait until February 2025 to make it back.
Therefore, an expected 8-day trip may potentially end up being a whopping 8 months, according to the report.
NASA’s Steve Stich says the agency has a plan in place to launch two astronauts on Crew-9, and bring back Butch and Suni in February 2025 on that vehicle. NASA has not decided to activate this option yet.
— Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) August 7, 2024
Starliner Astronauts Could Be In Space Until Next Yearhttps://t.co/k9yAxt1elc pic.twitter.com/4sVV4MNXl3
— Forbes (@Forbes) August 7, 2024
Boeing’s Starliner crisis has backed NASA into a corner. https://t.co/nvDB6iEz66
— Futurism (@futurism) August 7, 2024
Your friendly reminder that there’s two astronauts just hanging out on the ISS
It’s been 54 days since they were supposed to come home pic.twitter.com/pAZqKxoVcy
— Morning Brew ☕️ (@MorningBrew) August 7, 2024
Remember those 2 astronauts that Boeing got stuck in space?
Yeah, they’re still up there. pic.twitter.com/3iAX19mx1X
— Hard Pass (@HardPass4) August 6, 2024
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