(Cape Canaveral) NASA said Thursday it will decide this weekend whether Boeing’s new capsule is safe enough to return two astronauts from the International Space Station, where they have been waiting since June.
Administrator Bill Nelson and other top officials will meet Saturday. An announcement is expected from Houston after the meeting ends.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams blasted off aboard Boeing’s Starliner on June 5. The test flight quickly encountered thruster failures and helium leaks so severe that NASA kept the capsule parked at the station while engineers debated what to do next.
SpaceX could retrieve the astronauts, but it would keep them up there until February. They were supposed to return after about a week at the station.
If NASA decides that SpaceX is the way to go, Starliner will return to Earth empty in September.
Engineers are evaluating a new computer model for Starliner thrusters and how they might perform as the capsule descends from orbit to land in the western U.S. desert. The results, including updated risk analyses, will factor into the final decision, NASA said.
Boeing said earlier this month that extensive testing of the thrusters in space and on the ground demonstrated Starliner’s ability to safely return astronauts.
It was the company’s first astronaut flight, delayed for years by a multitude of capsule problems. Two previous Starliner test flights had no one on board.
NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX a decade ago, after the space shuttles retired, to ferry its astronauts to and from the station. SpaceX has been doing so since 2020.
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