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The two NASA astronauts who piloted the first crewed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule — and were left behind on the space station as the beleaguered spacecraft returned to Earth — took questions on Friday for the first time in weeks.
Butch Wilmore, a Tennessee native and former Navy test pilot, said during the conversation that he and crewmate Suni Williams were “very fortunate” to have the ability to stay on the International Space Station a few more months and come home using a back-up option: hitching a ride on a SpaceX-made Crew Dragon vehicle.
“There’s many cases in the past where there have not been other options,” Wilmore said.
However, he added, he believes that the astronauts and NASA and Boeing teams on the ground could have eventually reached a consensus in their analysis of Starliner’s issues given more time.
“I think the data could have gotten there. We could have gotten to the point, I believe, where we could have returned on Starliner,” he said. “But we just simply ran out of time.”
Wilmore added that time constraints are a fact of life aboard the space station, which keeps to a busy schedule as visiting spacecraft drop off rotating crews of astronauts and cargo ships.
Before returning Starliner home empty on September 7, NASA had noted the need to free up the docking port where the vehicle had been attached to make way for other vessels.
During an August 24 news briefing, NASA officials also indicated that Boeing disagreed with some of the space agency’s risk assessments.
There was “just a little disagreement (between NASA and Boeing) in terms of the level of risk,” NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich said. “It just depends on how you evaluate the risk. … We did it a little differently with our crew than Boeing did.”
The Starliner, which had suffered a series of helium leaks and propulsion issues en route to the ISS in June, made it back to Earth with no major issues — though officials did report an additional problem with one of the vehicle’s thrusters, or small engines used to keep the vehicle oriented in space. But the issue did not affect the overall landing.
“I was so happy it got home with no problems,” Williams said on Friday of Starliner’s return. “The whole crew got up at 3 in the morning, and we had it up on our iPads, watching it land.”
Williams added that teams on the ground and in space “made the right decisions,” saying, “It’s risky, and that’s how it goes in the business.”
Adjusting to a months-long mission
Williams and Wilmore had launched aboard Starliner in early June expecting to spend only about eight days on board the orbiting laboratory. They will now return home on a SpaceX mission scheduled to come back in 2025.
When asked if he had trouble adjusting to the prospect of waiting months longer to get home, Wilmore said Friday, “I’m not gonna fret over it. I mean, there’s no benefit to it at all. So my transition was — maybe it wasn’t instantaneous — but it was pretty close.”
Williams said that she missed her family and pets and told CNN’s Kristin Fisher she was disappointed to miss some family events this fall and winter, but she added: “This is my happy place. I love being up here in space. It’s just fun. You know, every day you do something that’s work, quote, unquote, you can do it upside down. You can do it sideways, so it adds a little different perspective.”
Wilmore said he and Williams will be involved in discussions with NASA and Boeing regarding what needs to change in order to get the Starliner spacecraft back on track.
“Obviously, when you have issues like we’ve had, there’s some changes that need to be made. Boeing’s on board with that. We’re all on board with that,” Wilmore said.
Starliner’s crewed test flight was meant to “push the edge of the envelope. …And when you do things with spacecraft that have never been done before, just like Starliner, you’re going to find some things,” he added. “In this case, we found some things that we just could not get comfortable with putting us back in the Starliner.”
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