A U.S. astronaut stuck on the International Space Station said Friday that he believed Boeing’s Starliner could have carried him home if more time had been available to address the spacecraft’s issues. Last week, Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams watched the Boeing Starliner they rode to the ISS three months earlier return to Earth without them.
“We could have gotten to the point, I believe, where we could have returned on Starliner, but we just simply ran out of time,” Wilmore said Friday in a video press conference.
On June 5, Wilmore and Williams launched aboard the Starliner as part of the vessel’s first crewed mission, which was initially planned to last eight days in orbit. However, due to several technical issues with the Starliner, their stay is now expected to extend to eight months.
Last month, NASA decided that Williams and Wilmore would return in February with the Crew-9 flight of Boeing’s aerospace rival, SpaceX.
Though Wilmore said he was “absolutely not” let down by the decision to stay in space, he indicated there were “disagreements” about how to handle the return.
“In this case, we found some things that we just could not get comfortable with putting us back in the Starliner when we had other options,” Wilmore said. He noted that safety concerns played a significant role in the decision-making process, emphasizing that the priority was to ensure a safe and reliable return to Earth.
NASA and Boeing have been working to resolve the technical issues with the Starliner, and both parties are optimistic about future missions. Wilmore and Williams remain focused on their work aboard the ISS while looking forward to their eventual return.
The extended mission has provided them with additional time to conduct experiments and contribute to ongoing research on the ISS. Despite the unexpected extension of their stay, Wilmore and Williams have remained positive and committed to their roles as astronauts.
