9 months ago
23
(NewsNation) — Boeing’s Starliner capsule volition permission the International Space Station connected Friday without its 2 astronauts connected board.
Weather permitting, the capsule volition past onshore astatine the White Sands Space Harbor successful New Mexico astatine astir midnight Saturday — six hours aft taking disconnected from the ISS.
Steve Stitch, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said astronauts Sunita "Suni" Williams and Barry "Butch" Wilmore "were ne'er truly stuck oregon stranded."
“They ever had a mode to depart the Space Station," helium said. "And to me, erstwhile idiosyncratic is stranded, they are successful a determination wherever they cannot permission and so, they had Starliner arsenic the conveyance they could depart from for a play of time.”
NASA precocious decided it was excessively risky for Williams and Wilmore to instrumentality connected the Starliner arsenic primitively planned. The troubled capsule has experienced a bid of issues with its absorption power thrusters and helium leaks.
What was expected to beryllium an eight-day ngo for Williams and Wilmore is much apt to past 8 months, with their instrumentality present planned for February.
In the meantime, they some are staying wrong an orbiting laboratory astatine the ISS, wherever they are performing different experiments and exercising erstwhile they can.
The 2 volition present drawback a thrust connected SpaceX's Dragon Capsule, which is acceptable to motorboat to the ISS astatine the extremity of the period but won't instrumentality to Earth until adjacent year.
NewsNation's Chris Cuomo spoke to Williams’ mom, Bonnie Pandya, past week.
“She told maine not to interest astir her,” Pandya said. “Everything's gonna beryllium fine. I've been an astronaut ma for 20 years, and this is her 3rd flight. Even though it has a problem, we inactive don't consciousness that there's a large problem. They conscionable privation to beryllium definite that they're harmless coming back."
Williams and Wilmore person been connected the ISS since aboriginal June.
NASA officials accidental the astronauts aren’t "stuck successful space,” but are present portion of a antithetic ngo portion they hold to travel home.
