In a press conference just moments back, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson confirmed that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams would return on SpaceX's Crew 9 Dragon to Earth next year in February. The Administrator's announcement came after months of testing and data analysis that appeared to have been tilted in Boeing's favor up until last month.
Nelson added that as of now, NASA continues to work with Boeing to ensure that Starliner will be able to conduct future missions to the ISS, and as part of his opening remarks, the NASA Administrator outlined that we have been "very solicitous" of all of our employees when asking them for objections for returning the crew to Earth on Starliner.
NASA Stresses Astronaut Safety As Key Driver Behind Decision To Skip Starliner For Crew Return
The decision to bring Starliner home is the result of a "commitment to safety," outlined Nelson, adding that not only was safety NASA's "core value," but it was also the agency's North Star. The Administrator's decision came after a detailed review earlier today. NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free shared that today's decision came after analysis at the directorate and agency level, including input from engineering, safety, medical, and flight operations teams.
"The uncertainty in our margins is where we, have, come to, uh, make the decision that the Administrator laid out," shared Free, adding that this "uncertainty remains in our understanding of the physics going on in the thrusters, and still we saw some work to go" He praised NASA and Boeing teams for the model development, thruster testing, understanding the valve's material properties as well as the "complicated" fluid physics of the propellant inside Starliner's thrusters.
NASA's Associate Administrator for operations, Ken Bowersox, explained the decision making process behind the shift to SpaceX's Crew Dragon. He outlined that "we conducted a poll, um, all of the organizations on the polling sheet indicated that they thought we should proceed uncrewed with the, with the flight test." NASA's next steps will be to process this uncrewed flight test, which will lead to another readiness review next week for the Starliner's uncrewed undocking from the ISS.
"It's been a long summer," said NASA's commercial crew manager Steve Stich. Praising his teams for working "long hours, weekends, nights, testing, analysis, reviews," Stich maintained that predicting Starliner's thrusters' temperatures and other performances was difficult. "The best course of action was to return Starliner un crewed," said Stich, as there "was just too much uncertainty in the prediction of the thrusters."
He added that "if we had a model, if we had a way to accurately predict what the thrusters would do for the undock, and all the way through the de orbit burn, and do the separation sequence," NASA might have decided to return the two astronauts on Starliner.
However, when NASA "looked at the data and looked at the potential for thruster failures with a crew on board, and then getting into this very tight sequence of finishing the de orbit burn which puts the vehicle on entry, and then immediately maneuvering from that into a sep sequence to separate the service module and crew module, it was just too much risk for the crew," said Stich.
As a result, NASA is changing the separation sequence for a simplified process that will make Starliner depart the station more quickly. Starliner will land and undock in early September, with Wilmore and Williams staying at the station until February. As part of this, NASA and SpaceX will modify the Crew 9 Dragon to fly with two astronauts and then return with four.
About the author: Ramish is a seasoned technology writer and editor with more than a decade of experience. He specializes in semiconductor fabrication and market analysis. With a background in finance and supply chain management - via his bachelors in Finance and a micromasters in supply chain management from MIT - Ramish combines financial rigor with deep industry insight to deliver accurate and authoritative coverage.
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