Mission to rescue Boeing’s stranded astronauts suffers another blow

NASA has changed its flight plans ahead of a SpaceX mission to bring home the stranded astronauts stuck on the International Space Station (ISS) and has removed two crew members from the trip’s roster. 

SpaceX Crew-9 will now only fly a two-man mission to the ISS in order to bring back the stranded Boeing Crew, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been stuck in space for eight months. 

Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson will no longer be flying on the mission, but will be ‘eligible for reassignment on a future mission,’ NASA announced Friday. 

Despite the fact that the two NASA astronauts will return back to Earth, ditching Cardman and Wilson puts a dent in Crew-9’s mission as they ‘trained as a crew of four,’ NASA chief astronaut Joe Acaba said in a statement. 

NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will continue on with the mission as a commander and mission specialist, respectively. 

The two Americans were kicked off in favor of the Russian crew member in order to continue to fulfill the arrangement with Roscosmos to fly one Russian astronaut, ‘who can operate their critical systems for continued, safe station operations,’ on each SpaceX flight, NASA said. In return, the US receives seats on Soyuz spacecraft. 

The flight is expected to take off in February 2025 – pushing it back five months from it’s original September 24 takeoff. 

Despite acknowledging that it will be an adjustment for the crew, Acaba has the ‘utmost confidence in all our crew, who have been excellent throughout training for the mission.’ 

‘Zena and Stephanie will continue to assist their crewmates ahead of launch, and they exemplify what it means to be a professional astronaut,’ he said. 

The two female astronauts hold no hard feelings, both saying they believed the two men would do just fine. 

‘I am confident Nick and Alex will step into their roles with excellence,’ Cardman, a scientist, said. 

NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will continue on with the mission as a commander and mission specialist, respectively. The flight is expected to take off in February 2025 – pushing it back five months from it’s original September 24 takeoff

Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson will no longer be flying on the mission, but will be ‘eligible for reassignment on a future mission,’ NASA announced Friday (pictured L-R: Gorbunov, Hague, Cardman and Wilson) 

Hague has clocked in 203 days in space already and this will be his third launch and second mission to the ISS, NASA said. 

He also did a developmental rotation at the DOD Space Force, where he worked as its director of test and evaluation from 2020 to 2022, before returning to NASA, where he worked on the Boeing Starliner Program. 

For Gorbunov, on the other hand, this will be his first trip to space. 

Once the pair reach the ISS, they will become crew members of Expedition 72, where they will join Wilmore and Williams, among others, to conduct scientific research and maintenance activities, NASA said. 

Wilmore and Williams were trapped on the ISS have their Boeing ship was faulty and several attempts to bring them home equally failed, including considering sending them home on the very ship that left them stranded. 

Wilmore and Williams were trapped on the ISS have their Boeing ship was faulty and several attempts to bring them home equally failed, including considering sending them home on the very ship that left them stranded. (Pictured: a SpaceX spacecraft) 

A full timeline of Boeing’s Starliner program, from the singing of their massive contact to the incident that left two astronauts stranded aboard the ISS

Ultimately, NASA decided that the risk of a fatal accident is too high to bring the astronauts home on Starliner. 

Boeing officials cooperated with the decision, but they didn’t necessarily agree with it.

‘For their part, the Boeing engineers think the capsule is totally safe, would easily bring the crew back home in safety as needed.’

‘NASA looked at all the same test data, but they decided, ‘we just don’t have enough certainty.”

The impact of this decision on NASA’s relationship with Boeing remains to be seen.