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.
Yes and no. One of the problems right now is each of the three capsule designs uses a different pressure suit, with different hookups, and each relies on a custom fitted seat liner to absorb some of the shock of landing / splashdown, so if you’re planning on landing on a different ship then you launched on, they need to send up a new seat liner & space suit.
This was half a problem even with the shuttle. You still needed a different spacesuit, but because it landed gently on a runway, it didn’t require custom seats.
Ah come on. Don’t tell us it’s the square plug into the round receptacle issue all over again (Apollo 13 style)?