After more than two months of testing and discussions, NASA has decided that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will return home in February 2025 on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, and the Boeing Starliner they flew to the International Space Station on in June will return uncrewed. At a news conference Saturday, Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said there was “too much uncertainty” surrounding predictions about Starliner’s thrusters to move forward with a crewed return flight.
“The decision to keep Butch and Suni on board the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is the result of a commitment to safety,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said. The plan now is for the first Starliner crew to return with SpaceX’s Crew-9, which is scheduled to launch to the ISS in late September. It was initially supposed to carry four crew members, but will instead have to go ahead with two, to make room for Wilmore and Williams. That spacecraft is being reconfigured with seating for the two astronauts, and Dragon spacesuits will be added to its cargo for them to wear at home.
By the time Wilmore and Williams leave, the duo will have been on the space station for about eight months. Starliner's flight test was only supposed to last a little over a week.
The next step, according to Stich, is to prepare Starliner for undocking and complete the uncrewed test flight. The agency plans to conduct the second part of its readiness review for the process this week, but expects undocking to take place early next month. “We are changing the separation sequence that we had planned and will revisit those aspects in the readiness review,” Stich said. “We are going to use a simplified separation technique to get away from the station a little bit quicker.”
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