NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are used to spending time away from their families. Both are former U.S. Navy captains who served in war zones and spent six months aboard the International Space Station.
When the astronauts launched to the space station on June 5 aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, they expected to return home in a few weeks, or at most a month. Their minimum mission length was eight days, but there was always the possibility that NASA could approve a short extension. Wilmore and Williams were the first astronauts to blast into orbit on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, a milestone that came about seven years later than Boeing and NASA had originally anticipated.
But the test flight did not achieve all of its objectives. Wilmore and Williams are now just over three months into their eight-month mission aboard the space station. The Starliner spacecraft has been plagued with problems, leading NASA officials to decide last month to send the capsule back to Earth without the two astronauts on board. Instead of returning aboard Starliner, Wilmore and Williams are scheduled to return to Earth in February aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
Grateful for the choice
On Friday, the two astronauts spoke to reporters for the first time since NASA’s decision to remain in orbit until early 2025.
“It was tough at times,” Wilmore said. “It was tough from start to finish. Of course, as a spacecraft commander and pilot, you don’t want to see the spacecraft launch without you, but that’s what happened.”
Both astronauts are veteran Navy test pilots who have flown on the Space Shuttle and Russian Soyuz spacecraft. No captain wants to abandon ship, but that wasn’t the case with the Starliner. Instead, the ship abandoned them.
Williams said she and Wilmore watched Starliner detach from the space station last week from the lab’s multi-window Cupola module, keeping them busy with several tasks, including overseeing undocking and managing the station’s systems during the dynamic phase of departure.
“At that moment, we were watching the spacecraft take off,” Williams said, “and it was nice to have that extra activity. Of course, we’re very familiar with Starliner, so it was pretty clear to us at that moment what was going on.”
NASA’s top brass wasn’t confident enough about Starliner’s safety after five thrusters temporarily failed as the spacecraft approached the space station in June, and the agency wasn’t willing to risk the lives of the two astronauts aboard Starliner because engineers weren’t sure the same or more thrusters would do the job they needed to do on the return journey.
Starliner’s suspect thruster was found to be functional after it left the space station on September 6 for re-entry. One of the thrusters in Starliner’s crew module was a different design than the previously problematic thruster, and it failed on the return leg. An investigation into this issue, along with previous problems with thrusters overheating and helium leaks, will be added to the list of things Boeing and NASA engineers will do before the next Starliner flight.
“This is a very risky business and things don’t always go as planned,” Wilmore said. “Every test flight that’s ever been done, the first flight of a spacecraft or an aircraft, has had problems. Ninety percent of our training is preparing for the unexpected, and sometimes the unexpected is bigger than we expected.”
