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’ve been waiting since June.
Administrator Bill Nelson and other top officials will meet Saturday. An announcement is expected from Houston once the meeting ends.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams launched aboard Boeing’s Starliner on June 5. The test flight quickly encountered thruster failures and helium leaks so serious that NASA kept the capsule parked at the station as engineers debated what to do.
SpaceX could retrieve the astronauts, but that would keep them up there until next February. They were supposed to return after a week or so at the station.
My take on this is maybe a little calloused and mean but why is NASA involved in that decision? They hired contractors to take over the launch this part of their program. One of the contractors has an equipment problem snd that is on them to overcome in a safe manner. I don’t want the Boeing astronauts to get hurt but this isn’t NASA’s risk to accept or mitigate.
Because those are NASA astronauts on there, not Boeing employees. So NASA stepped in.
This flight is not a Boeing mission, its a NASA mission