On Saturday, NASA announced that it will use SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft to bring back the two astronauts who have been stranded in space for 80 days, emphasizing that it does not trust Boeing’s problematic Starliner spacecraft.
“It was just too much risk for the crew,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager.
The much-anticipated decision regarding the fate of the astronauts, one of the most significant the American agency has had to make in years, is a major blow to Boeing, which had maintained that the Starliner was safe.
B. Wilmore, 61, and S. Williams, 58, are retired U.S. Navy officers with extensive experience in long-duration space missions.
The two NASA astronauts, Sunita Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore, reported a series of technical problems with the spacecraft during their journey to the International Space Station in early June.
Boeing has said that it ” remains confident” in its ability to safely return the astronauts, while NASA disagrees.
For Boeing, the decision to use a competitor’s spacecraft to return the Starliner crew is another setback, adding to the company’s recent troubles, which include the explosion of a 737 Max earlier this year and two fatal accidents in 2018 and 2019 that resulted in 346 deaths.
