NASA’s Boeing test crew has finally returned home with SpaceX from the International Space Station (ISS). They were left there 9 months ago, when their planned week-long test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft suffered problems.
A SpaceX Dragon has been at the ISS docked for a while, however NASA wanted to keep the two astronauts in space until the next SpaceX mission could launch NASA’s next crew to replace them. That launch (named Crew-10) occurred just days ago.
With a new crew now on ISS, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams joined the trip home on the “Crew-9” SpaceX Dragon with fellow NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. They blazed a trail of fire through the atmospheres over the Gulf of America, followed by nominal chute deployments and splash-down under beautiful conditions off the coast of the Florida panhandle. NASA’s coverage (above) even had a drone flying around they splashed-down.
A week-long test flight turned into 9 months in space
Wilmore and Williams launched on Boeing’s Starliner June 5, 2024, atop a ULA Atlas V rocket. It was the first crewed flight test for the spacecraft, to validate and certify it for operational missions for NASA. SpaceX had to prove themselves the same several years ago, before being certified by NASA to fly NASA crews to and from space.
Following Starliner’s launch, however, numerous worrying helium leaks and thruster problems occurred. A mission that was supposed to last a week turned into weeks, and into months, while Boeing and NASA engineers got to work trying to understand the root cause and reproduce the same issues with predictability.
Eventually, NASA decided to leave the crew safe on the ISS, and asked SpaceX to bring them home on their next contracted NASA crew mission.
Starliner returned to Earth just fine, however Boeing has work to do before NASA has confidence in Starliner for another crew. There has been no update since the end of that mission in Sep 2024.
Impressive resumes – even for an astronaut
Wilmore and Williams were chosen to fly Starliner’s first crewed flight test last year in large part due to their extensive spaceflight experience. With her latest adventure now complete, Williams has racked up 9 career spacewalks and flown on 4 different spacecraft – Space Shuttle, Soyuz, Starliner and Dragon. She has spent 675 days in space, the most of any American woman.
Wilmore too has now flown in space on 4 different spacecraft, all the same as Williams. He has conducted 5 spacewalks totaling 21 hours, and flown 3 missions.
Both astronauts are also retired US Navy Captains.
