NASA says it’s a long way from ‘writing off Boeing’

SpaceX Rescue mission launched on Saturday with a small crew of two astronauts and two empty reserved seats Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williamswho will return next year. The Dragon capsule docked in the dark as the two rovers soared 265 miles (426 kilometers) over Botswana.

NASA transferred Willmore and Williams to SpaceX after concerns about their safety Boeing Starliner capsule. This was the Starliner’s first test flight with a crew, and NASA decided that the propulsion malfunctions and helium leaks that appeared after liftoff were too serious and unexplained to risk returning test pilots. So the Starliner returned to Earth empty earlier this month.

The Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA’s Nick Hague and Alexander Gorbunov of the Russian Space Agency will remain on the space station until February, turning what should have been a week-long trip for Willmore and Williams into a mission lasting more than eight months.

Two NASA astronauts were pulled from the mission to make room for Willmore and Williams on the return flight.

NASA likes to replace its station crews every six months or so. SpaceX has offered taxi service since the company’s first spaceflight in 2020. NASA also hired Boeing for ferry flights after the space shuttles retired, but flawed software and other Starliner problems led to years of delays and more than $1 billion in repairs.

Starliner inspections are underway at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, and post-flight data reviews are scheduled to begin this week.

“We’re a long way from saying, ‘Hey, we’ve written off Boeing,'” NASA associate administrator Jim Frye said in a pre-launch news conference.

The arrival of two new astronauts means the four who have been there since March can now return to Earth in their SpaceX capsule in just over a week. Their stay was extended by a month due to Starliner disruption.

Although Saturday’s launch went well, SpaceX said the rocket’s upper stage ended up outside the target impact zone in the Pacific Ocean due to poor engine operation. The company has halted all Falcon launches until it figures out what went wrong.