Miami, Aug 30 (EFE).- Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which suffered technical failures, will depart from the International Space Station (ISS) next Friday, September 6, without its two crew members, who will remain in the orbital laboratory until next February, when they are scheduled to return to Earth in a SpaceX capsule.
NASA announced on Friday the names of the two crew members of the next SpaceX mission, Crew9, who will return in February along with the two Starliner astronauts who were forced to extend their stay from about ten days to nearly eight months due to technical problems.
According to NASA, Starliner will separate from the ISS at 18:04 EST (22:04 GMT) next Friday and will begin an unmanned autonomous return that will end six hours later, when it lands in New Mexico with the help of a parachute system.
The capsule’s return follows NASA’s decision to keep Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore and Sunita ‘Suni’ Williams, the two astronauts on the first manned Starliner mission, on the ISS until February 2025 for safety reasons, after the capsule experienced technical failures.
Both took off from Florida aboard the Starliner on June 5 and then successfully docked with the orbital laboratory. The mission was scheduled to return in the middle of that month, but failures in some of the thrusters and the discovery of small helium leaks postponed their return indefinitely.
Crew 9 is scheduled to launch from Kennedy Space Center on September 24.
The six-month mission, which will mark SpaceX’s ninth crew rotation on the ISS for NASA, will not take off with the four crew members initially planned, but only with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, NASA said today.
Hague and Gorbunov will serve as commander and mission specialist, respectively, while NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson, previously announced as crewmates, will be reassigned to a future mission and their two seats will be filled by Williams and Wilmore.
“I am deeply proud of our entire team and am confident that Nick and Alex will assume their roles with excellence. All four of us remain dedicated to the success of this mission, and Stephanie and I look forward to flying when the time is right,” Cardman said in a NASA statement.
“I know Nick and Alex will do a great job aboard the International Space Station,” Wilson said. EFE
