Key Points
The announcement at a press conference today caps off months of speculation about the best plan to safely bring the astronauts home after malfunctions with their ride, Boeings Starliner capsule, postponed their departure from the International Space Station in June..
Now, NASA has decided that Starliner will return home in September without Wilmore and Williams, who will stay on with the existing station crew and will return on SpaceXs Crew-9 mission next year...
Wilmore and Williams launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on June 5, becoming the first astronauts to perform a crewed test flight of Starliner, a capsule developed by Boeing to ferry people to and from the ISS...
It is the second vehicle, following SpaceXs Dragon capsule, to carry astronauts to the space station as part of NASAs Commercial Crew Program, which seeks to develop commercially operated spacecraft to transport crews to and from the ISS...
Between the retirement of NASAs Space Shuttle in 2011 and the first Dragon crewed mission in 2020, NASA and other agencies were solely reliant on Russias Soyuz capsule to bring their astronauts to the station..
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