Good Monday morning, friends.
It’s your Space Coast correspondent James Sparvero and sometime in the next week, we expect NASA could make the big decision - bring home Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams in the problematic Starliner capsule or make the astronauts wait until next year when a SpaceX Dragon can finally end their unexpectedly long mission in space.
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Up until just a couple weeks ago, any questions from reporters about SpaceX being a backup plan to get Butch and Suni home after all the problems with Starliner this summer were dismissed by NASA. Steve Stich, who runs the Commercial Crew program, was quick to stick to the plan of completing the Crew Flight Test as designed. As the weeks went by though, without naming SpaceX, Stich hinted that NASA does have a backup plan. “NASA always has contingency plans,” is how I remember he put it in a teleconference I listened to.
Now, as you’ve probably heard, a Dragon plan is on the table and as of their last update with us, NASA was split over what to do - crewed Starliner return before the space station’s next astronaut mission arrives next month or uncrewed Starliner return and Butch and Suni come home on the Crew-9 Dragon in February.
Crew-9 has already been delayed to buy the decision makers more time, but that time is running out. As Stich said, a decision must be made by “mid-August.”
I know most of you think it’s a no brainer to keep Butch and Suni off of Starliner as the mission managers still haven’t gotten to the root of its thruster problems, but would that spell the end of the spaceship as we know it? NASA has drilled in our heads why it thinks it’s so important to have two commercial spacecrafts capable of transporting astronauts to and from the space station (there’s also the Sierra Space Dream Chaser waiting in the wings).
However CFT ends, Starliner’s likely not going to fly its next astronaut mission before another long review and even more changes made to the capsule. I also wonder how embarrassing this could look for Boeing, which already has a pretty poor reputation right now. “If it’s Boeing, I’m not going,” seems to be the joke I often read in comment sections now.
This big decision also factors in a lot of implications for the ISS schedule but then again, even recently there have been unexpected, extended missions for astronauts, which did come to a safe and successful conclusion.
We’ll be right back with you as soon as we hear when the big news is coming down!
📧 Have any topics you’d like to discuss? Send me an email here.
👋 Here’s a little bit more about me.
Little did I know when watching Apollo 13 in the third grade that 20 years later, I was destined for a thrilling career as your Space Coast multimedia journalist.
Chemistry and biology weren’t so interesting to me in high school science, but I loved my Earth and Space class (Thanks, Mr. Lang).
Then in 2016, I traded Capitol correspondent in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for space correspondent. I’m proud that my first live report at News 6 happened to be the first time SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 booster on a barge. What seems so routine now was a really big deal that day in our newsroom!
From there, I’ve covered the Commercial Crew program and the return of human spaceflight to Kennedy Space Center (Demo-2 launched on my 33rd birthday!)
Now, as our coverage looks forward to missions to the moon and Mars, I often tell others I have the best job in local news. Because after all I’ve seen so far, I think I would be bored working somewhere else. I even bought a house near the Cape with a great view to the north so I never miss a launch even when I’m not working.
After eight years on the beat, though, I still consider myself a young space reporter and I always look forward to learning something new with every assignment.
Have a great launch into the rest of your week!