NASA Astronauts Face Indefinite ISS Stay as Starliner Woes Prompt Potential SpaceX Rescue

In a high-stakes space situational twist, NASA astronauts are living a real-life cliffhanger aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as Boeing's Starliner, their intended ride home, grapples with significant technical setbacks. What was initially planned as a briskly timed test mission has ballooned into a stay of over two months, with the clock still ticking and a definite return hanging in the balance.

The current predicaments were highlighted during a press briefing where Ken Bowersox of NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate outlined potential avenues for bringing astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams home, one of which may pivot from Boeing's troubled capsule to a SpaceX Crew Dragon.

The Starliner craft, embarking on its maiden voyage with a crew on June 5, has faced a series of technical hiccups, including RCS thruster failures significant for re-entry maneuverability and helium leaks within the propulsion system. These issues not only endanger mission safety but also strain NASA's preference for maintaining diverse transport avenues to the ISS.

The space community perked up as the space agency floated the prospect of resorting to a SpaceX Crew Dragon rescue operation. This scheme, as fleshed out by Steve Stich of NASA's commercial crew program, might see Wilmore and Williams prolong their orbit stay to approximately eight months, targeting a return around February 2025.

Boeing's tribulations have not come cheap, translating to a hefty 125-million-dollar write-off of unplanned expenditures atop an existing stack of financial misfortunes. Meanwhile, this snarl has led to the delay of an upcoming SpaceX Crew Dragon mission—originally slated for an August 18 takeoff—to late September, amplifying apprehensions about Starliner's fate.

With Plan-B potentially shrinking the next Crew Dragon mission crew size to two, Wilmore and Williams are settling into an elongated ISS tenure packed with scientific workloads and station upkeep tasks until a conclusive decision on their homebound journey is charted out.