NASA’s long-awaited decision on Starliner is imminent

A couple of NASA astronauts have spent more than two months orbiting Earth on the International Space Station, and NASA is finally nearing a decision on whether it’s OK to bring them home in the same spaceship that took them up there.

When the first test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft with crew on board launched back in June, officials said their trip to the station and back would last about eight days.

But some thrusters on Starliner inexplicably conked out as it approached the station, plus mission managers detected some helium leaks. These glitches forced Boeing and NASA to spend weeks trying to figure out the root causes and to determine whether Starliner was reliable and safe enough to use for the astronauts’ return trip.

The long-awaited announcement on that decision is now expected Saturday afternoon, at 1 p.m. ET, when the space agency holds a press briefing with NASA administrator Bill Nelson. That event will come just after his leadership team holds an internal Agency Test Flight Readiness Review, NASA says.

If the two astronauts, Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams, don’t come back in Starliner, they could return in a different capsule built and launched by SpaceX, which has successfully been providing taxi services to and from the station for several years.

But NASA officials have said that resorting to a SpaceX flight would require the astronauts to stay on the station for many more months.

Plus, it would possibly be a lethal blow to Boeing’s beleaguered Starliner program, which has been beset by delays and technical troubles.

In 2019, the company’s first uncrewed test flight didn’t even make it to the station. The second test flight, in 2022, was deemed a success, but engineers later found worrying problems such as the use of adhesive tape that was flammable. Fixing these issues delayed Starliner’s first flight with astronauts.

Boeing and SpaceX both have contracts with NASA as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, which was established to have industry provide regular flights to the nearby space station so that NASA would be freed up to focus on going to the moon and beyond.

While Starliner has yet to complete a crewed round-trip flight to the ISS, SpaceX has completed a number of crewed missions for NASA in recent years.