NASA announces plan to bring Starliner crew home next month

NASA plans to bring the two Starliner astronauts backmost to Earth, on with their 2 abstraction presumption crewmates, astir March 19-20, shortening their long-extended enactment successful orbit by astir 2 weeks, the bureau announced Tuesday.

The somewhat earlier-than-planned travel location was made imaginable by a tentative determination past week to power the adjacent acceptable of presumption fliers — Crew 10 — to a antithetic Crew Dragon spacecraft, 1 that tin beryllium acceptable for motorboat arsenic aboriginal arsenic March 12, with upwind and different factors considered.

Starliner aviator Sunita Williams, left, and Crew 9 commandant Nick Hague, right, hole for a spacewalk assisted by Starliner commandant Barry "Butch" Wilmore, center. All three, on with cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, are expected to instrumentality to Earth successful the 3rd week of March. NASA

After a five-to-seven-day handover to bring their Crew 10 replacements up to velocity connected the ins and outs of abstraction presumption operation, Crew 9 commandant Nick Hague, cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, Starliner commandant Barry "Butch" Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams, volition undock and caput backmost to Earth.

They'll travel location aboard the Crew Dragon that carried Hague and Gorbunov to the presumption past September, on with 2 bare seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams.

Assuming the dates clasp up, Wilmore and Williams volition person logged astir 290 days successful orbit since launch June 5 connected a ngo primitively expected to past a small much than 1 week. That's however agelong Boeing and NASA managers thought it would instrumentality to implicit the Starliner's archetypal piloted trial flight.

As it turned out, the Starliner, built arsenic portion of a NASA programme to make autarkic commercialized unit ships to ferry astronauts to and from the abstraction station, ran into propulsion problems and propellant leaks that prompted weeks and past months of tests and analysis.

In the end, NASA managers decided the risks were excessively precocious to bring Wilmore and Williams down aboard the Starliner. Instead, they opted to bring the vessel down by distant control, without its crew, and to keep Wilmore and Williams aboard the station until they could thrust location with Hague and Gorbunov astatine the extremity of the Crew 9 expedition.

NASA primitively planned to bring each 4 backmost to Earth successful February, but precocious past year, another period was added to the ngo due to the fact that of enactment needed to acceptable the Crew 10 Dragon for launch.

President Trump past period blamed the Starliner crew's wide ngo hold connected the Biden administration, which helium said had "abandoned" the 2 astronauts successful space. He said helium had asked SpaceX laminitis Elon Musk to "go get" Wilmore and Williams. Musk besides blamed Biden successful a station connected X.

But the Biden medication had nary known power connected NASA's determination to widen the Starliner crew's mission, a program that has been successful spot since past September erstwhile the Crew 9 spacecraft was launched with a two-man unit and 2 bare seats for Wilmore and Williams.

And successful immoderate case, determination was nary request to "go get" the astronauts fixed the Crew 9 spacecraft, the Starliner crew's thrust home, has been docked astatine the abstraction presumption for the past 5 months.

Crew 10 poses for an authoritative NASA portrait. Left to right: cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, NASA aviator Nichole Ayers, ngo commandant Anne McClain and Japan's Takuya Onishi. NASA

Crew 10 commandant Anne McClain, aviator Nichole Ayers, Japan's Takuya Onishi and cosmonaut Kirill Peskov present program to blast disconnected astir 7:48 p.m. EDT connected March 12.

The motorboat day depends connected a assortment of factors, including an on-schedule motorboat of a commercialized satellite lander from the aforesaid pad connected Feb. 26 and, of course, the weather.

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