Nasa boeing starliner astronauts : Two tragic spaceflight failures affected NASA’s decision on how the Starliner astronauts should return home.
NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on June 5 aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, will now return to Earth no early than February 2025 aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule, rather than returning on Starliner.
The first crewed Starliner flight was described as an eight-day journey to the International Space Station. However, its stay in orbit has been prolonged several times due to concerns about the spacecraft’s engines. The eventual choice to send Williams and Wilmore home on the SpaceX Crew-9 mission, which NASA revealed over the weekend, was influenced by lessons learned from the agency’s two space shuttle catastrophes.
When asked in a news conference on Saturday (August 24) whether the Challenger and Columbia tragedies influenced his personal judgment, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson affirmed that this was the case.
Related: The Space Shuttle Challenger and the accident that permanently altered NASA
“It has affected the decision today by this collective group and all of those that participated in the Flight Test Readiness Review this morning,” according to Nelson. “It is trying to turn around the culture that first led to the loss of Challenger and then led to the loss of Columbia, where obvious mistakes were not being brought forth.”
The Columbia catastrophe took place on February 1, 2003, when the space shuttle Columbia broke apart during atmospheric reentry. A huge chunk of foam fell from the shuttle’s external tank during launch and damaged the orbiter’s wing, which was confirmed to be the cause. This came after the fatal launch disaster of the space shuttle Challenger in January 1986. Both mishaps resulted in the loss of the entire crew onboard, killing 14 astronauts in all.
