Originally set to return in mid-June, Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams may be on the station until February, 2025.
During a press conference today, NASA representatives confirmed they have a contingency plan to bring astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams home from the International Space Station (ISS) early next year. If they’re unable to leave sooner aboard the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that brought them there
Tests conducted at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility pointed to deformed Teflon seals being a potential cause of the Starliner’s thrusters failing, but the agency isn’t expected to make a final decision on whether or not Williams and Wilmore will return using Boeing’s spacecraft until mid-August.
The industry gossip/theory going around is that there’s a software issue in Starliner that makes it incapable of autonomously returning to Earth. This is probably NASA’s way of telling Boeing to fix it to a satisfactory degree of confidence before a given deadline, or else.
Arguably that alone is enough reason to completely abandon Starliner as an option for the return trip.
It’s only an issue in that the logic isn’t currently turned on. The capsule can do it just fine. It just wasn’t the point of this mission.
NASA update earlier today said Boeing can turn the ability on if needed. Will just need time for update and then testing to make sure it’s all good to go.
It takes no fewer than 4 weeks (!!!) to “turn the logic on”. The software that is currently loaded on Starliner cannot autonomously return - they will have to reflash the entire system.