With Boeing's troubled spaceship deemed too risky to bring its crew home from space, NASA has bumped the two female astronauts set for the next International Space Station rotation to free up seats.
Zena Cardman, who would have been the SpaceX Crew-9 commander, and Stephanie Wilson were cut from the upcoming crew. NASA astronaut Nick Hague, who would have served as pilot, will shift into the commander role, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will accompany him as mission specialist.
The decision to reduce the SpaceX Dragon crew from four astronauts to two leaves a pair of seats empty for Boeing Starliner's crew, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, on the return trip. They will ride home with Hague and Gorbunov at the end of the scheduled rotation in February 2025.
This summer, veteran astronauts Wilmore and Williams have remained in limbo 250 miles above Earth, as NASA leadership and Boeing mission managers discussed whether Starliner was safe to bring them home. During the test flight in June, the crew discovered perplexing propulsion issues on Starliner.
What should have been an eight-day stint in space for them will now stretch for eight months.
NASA chief astronaut Joe Acaba said choosing who would stay and who would go on the SpaceX Dragon flight was a tough decision. He had to balance selecting one NASA astronaut with experience to command the flight with preserving a spot for a Roscosmos cosmonaut in order to maintain an integrated crew.
"Zena and Stephanie will continue to assist their crewmates ahead of launch," Acaba said in a statement. "They exemplify what it means to be a professional astronaut."
Getting Starliner through the testing phase has been a relentless battle for Boeing, though its representatives have not always been forthcoming on why the program has suffered so many setbacks. A string of issues has spanned a decade.
After the Space Shuttle retired in 2011, NASA hitched all of its rides on Russian rockets to the space station, costing the United States tens of millions of dollars per ride. Some considered it a national embarrassment.
NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX to build commercial spaceships to carry astronauts to and from the station in 2014. While SpaceX's capsule went into service four years ago, Boeing's Starliner has yet to obtain certification for regular flight operations. NASA never intended to have all its eggs in Elon Musk's basket and says Starliner is still crucial to have as a backup.
So long as the weather conditions are good, Starliner will undock from the space station without any passengers on Sept. 6 and will attempt a robotic landing about six hours later, just before midnight on Sept. 7, in a New Mexico desert. The SpaceX Crew-9 capsule bringing up Hague and Gorbunov is expected to launch on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, no earlier than Sept. 24.
NASA said Cardman and Wilson will be eligible for reassignment to future expeditions.
