Saturday, August 24, 2024

[U] Breaking: NASA Just Said Suni And Butch Will Come Home In February '25 -- In A SpaceX Ride...


This means Boeing will fly the Starliner back on auto-pilot -- to see if it holds together, on de-orbit.

Now the press conference is over -- so, here's the update, in full:

. . .NASA will return Boeing’s Starliner to Earth without astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams aboard the spacecraft, the agency announced Saturday. The uncrewed return allows NASA and Boeing to continue gathering testing data on Starliner during its upcoming flight home, while also not accepting more risk than necessary for its crew.

Wilmore and Williams, who flew to the International Space Station in June aboard NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test, have been busy supporting station research, maintenance, and Starliner system testing and data analysis, among other activities.

“Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and most routine. A test flight, by nature, is neither safe, nor routine. The decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring Boeing’s Starliner home uncrewed is the result of our commitment to safety: our core value and our North Star,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “I’m grateful to both the NASA and Boeing teams for all their incredible and detailed work.”

Wilmore and Williams will continue their work formally as part of the Expedition 71/72 crew through February 2025. . . .


Space is hard, man. It does not cooperate. Onward, still. So it goes.

नमस्ते

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