The two NASA astronauts who flew to the International Space Station in June on Boeing’s troubled Starliner said on Friday that officials probably could have reached a point where they deemed the spacecraft safe enough to ride back to Earth, but they “just ran out of time” to conduct more tests.
“We had to decide: Is Starliner coming back with or without us?” astronaut Barry “Butch” Wilmore said in a media briefing from the International Space Station. “And we just did not have enough time to get to the end of that runway.”
Friday was the first time Wilmore and astronaut Sunita Williams had discussed their mission since Starliner, the Boeing spacecraft that carried them to the space station, landed safely on Earth without them last week. The pair left for their test mission in early June, but during Starliner’s flight, several thrusters on its service module stopped firing and its propulsion system suffered multiple helium leaks.
Since then, Boeing and NASA have struggled to determine what went wrong. On Aug. 24, NASA made the stunning decision to keep Williams and Wilmore in space until February — extending their mission from eight days to eight months.
Now they will be spending fall and much of the winter in space and will miss the holidays on Earth. They’ll be watching November elections from afar but said they recently requested mail ballots.
The astronauts will return to Earth on one of SpaceX’s Dragon capsules. The decision to return Starliner to Earth without its crew dealt a massive blow to Boeing, which vigorously defended the spacecraft’s safety and argued that it could bring Williams and Wilmore home despite the thruster and helium issues.
Wilmore said he is “absolutely not” let down by the issues Starliner has encountered since he and Williams departed for the space station. The crew was prepared to run into snags as part of the test flight, but he acknowledged that changes need to be made to Starliner before it is ready for future manned flights.
“We’ve got lessons learned that we will go through,” Wilmore said. “We will be involved in those discussions, and the things that need to change will change.”
Williams, who is also on her third space flight, agreed it was the right decision for the crew to wait for Dragon’s return mission. A crew currently at the space station arrived on a different Dragon capsule that is docked to the station, giving the astronauts a chance to explore it before their own return trip, she said.
The astronauts — both retired Navy captains — will continue working alongside other crews at the space station while spending another six months orbiting Earth at 17,500 mph. Both remain in contact with their loved ones at home, but Williams said it was hard at first to not fret over missed fall and winter plans with her husband and two dogs.
“I was a little bit nervous, to be honest with you, to say, ‘Okay, I’m not coming home,’” Williams said. “The up part is we’re here with our friends, we’ve got a ride home and we’re looking forward to the next couple months.”
The pair have more than 500 days in space combined between them. That wealth of previous experience has made it easier to adapt to life on the space station, Williams said.
Wilmore, 61, is looking forward to arriving home to his wife and two daughters, but the feeling that space is his and Williams’s “happy place” hasn’t faded, he said.
“I don’t look back and say, ‘Woulda, shoulda, coulda.’ I look back and say, ‘Going forward, how can I fix? What can we do to make this better?’ ” Wilmore said. “That’s our mindset right now.”
