NASA expects to decide this weekend how to bring Starliner astronauts home

Enlarge / A high-resolution commercial Earth-imaging satellite owned by Maxar captured this view of the International Space Station on June 7 with Boeing’s Starliner capsule docked at the lab’s forward port (lower right). (credit: Satellite image (c) 2024 Maxar Technologies)

Senior NASA leaders, including the agency’s administrator Bill Nelson, will meet Saturday in Houston to decide whether Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is safe enough to ferry astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back to Earth from the International Space Station.

The Flight Readiness Review (FRR) is expected to conclude with NASA’s most consequential safety decision in nearly a generation. One option is to clear the Starliner spacecraft to undock from the space station in early September with Wilmore and Williams onboard, as their flight plan initially laid out, or to bring the capsule home without its crew.

As of Thursday, the two veteran astronauts have been on the space station for 77 days, nearly 10 times longer than their planned stay of eight days. Wilmore and Williams were the first people to launch and dock at the space station aboard a Starliner spacecraft, but multiple thrusters failed and the capsule leaked helium from its propulsion system as it approached the orbiting completed on June 6.