Boeing astronauts are still stranded at the International Space Station, and the timeline for their return is becoming more unclear as time passes.
Blaze News previously reported on aerospace and defense corporation Boeing and its launch of the Starliner spacecraft in early June 2024.
A mission to the ISS by crew members Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams was initially slated to return to Earth in as few as eight days after launch. The mission failed even within a generous grace period, and it has been over eight weeks since the vessel was launched into space.
With a return date up in the air, speculation had begun about how the astronauts would return home after it was revealed that helium leaks and thruster failures were hindering the Starliner and preventing its re-entry.
As TMZ reported, NASA says the astronauts may need to make their return on the Dragon Crew-9 mission operated by rival company SpaceX, headed by Elon Musk.
Crew-9 was initially meant to launch for the ISS on August 18, 2024, but has since been pushed back to no earlier than September 24, 2024, per Spaceflight Now.
With that in mind, most reports suggest SpaceX's six-month mission will not return until at least February 2025, but given the delayed start time, it could also be March 2025. This would potentially extend Boeing's mission from approximately two weeks to about nine or ten months.
Despite previous uncertainty as to whether or not Starliner would be relying on SpaceX for a return mission, NASA has clarified that the SpaceX launch delay is directly related to the Boeing mission.
"This adjustment allows more time for mission managers to finalize return planning for the agency's Boeing Crew Flight Test currently docked to the orbiting laboratory," NASA stated.
However, Boeing's most recent mission update stated that the company's "confidence remains high" that the Starliner will make its return trip on its own.
"We remain confident in Starliner and its ability to safely return to Earth with crew based on an abundance of testing conducted by our teams and NASA in space and on the ground," Boeing wrote on X.
SpaceX has reportedly been testing scenarios in which it would accommodate two extra crew members on the return to Earth on Dragon Crew-9 and has already identified flight suits that would fit the two Boeing astronauts.
The original Crew-9 mission was to launch with four astronauts from Kennedy Space Center. The astronauts identified for the mission are Zena Cardman, Nick Hague, Stephanie Wilson, and Russian cosmonaut Alexsandr Gorbunov.
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