This week, NASA is sending up a rescue mission to the Worldwide Area Station.
On Thursday (Sept. 26), NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov of Russia’s area company Roscosmos will launch to the Worldwide area Station (ISS) on SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission. Two different NASA astronauts, Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson, each mission specialists, have been speculated to be aboard as properly.
However Wilson and Cardman have been reduce from the flight with a view to make room for 2 different NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who’re at present caught on the station with no devoted trip residence. The duo now will hitch a trip residence with Hague and Gorbunov when Crew-9 departs in February 2025, having spent roughly eight months in area. Williams and Wilmore have been speculated to spend simply 10 days or so in area. How did NASA discover itself on this place?
Shortly after Wilmore and Williams launched on Crew Flight Check (CFT), the primary astronaut mission of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, on June 5, the capsule encountered points. 5 of its 28 reaction-control thrusters malfunctioned, and a number of other helium leaks have been detected within the spacecraft’s propulsion system.
NASA spent weeks diagnosing the problems by conducting checks utilizing Starliner {hardware} on the White Sands Check Facility in New Mexico. Wilmore and Williams additionally carried out thruster checks on the Starliner docked on the ISS to attempt to produce as a lot information as doable for mission groups on the bottom to research with a view to decide if the car was a secure trip residence for astronauts.
“Our massive concern is having a profitable deorbit burn, ensuring that the [propellant] system works simply the way in which it must, all through the deorbit burn,” mentioned Ken Bowersox, affiliate administrator for NASA’s Area Operations Mission Directorate, throughout an Aug. 14 briefing.
Finally, the area company introduced 10 days later that it had determined to convey the car residence with out its crew. That left Starliner’s two astronauts, Williams and Wilmore, caught on the orbital outpost till they might hitch a trip residence on Crew-9.
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Starliner’s first uncrewed flight take a look at was equally unsuccessful. In December 2019, the spacecraft failed to succeed in the area station on account of software program points. A second uncrewed orbital flight take a look at in Could 2022 made it to the station and again simply tremendous, though eight months later than scheduled.
After CFT concluded with Starliner touchdown uncrewed within the New Mexico desert on Sept. 7, 2024, NASA leaders mentioned Wilmore and Williams would have been simply tremendous had they ridden it residence. “It might have been a secure, profitable touchdown with the crew on board,” mentioned Steve Stich, supervisor of NASA’s Business Crew Program, throughout a post-landing press convention earlier this month.
However, invoking classes realized from the area shuttle Challenger and Columbia disasters, NASA harassed that it doesn’t need to put astronauts in danger greater than is important.
“The choice to maintain Butch and Suni aboard the Worldwide Area Station and produce the Boeing Starliner residence uncrewed is a results of a dedication to security,” NASA Administrator Invoice Nelson advised reporters on Aug. 24.
“NASA, ever since, has tried very onerous to result in an environment during which persons are inspired to step ahead and converse their thoughts, and I believe, proper, at the moment is an effective instance of that,” Nelson mentioned.
NASA was in an identical place simply final yr. Astronaut Frank Rubio was stranded on the ISS when a violent coolant leak popped up on the Russian Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft he rode to the ISS as a part of the Expedition 68 mission.
Rubio would go on to spend 371 steady days in area, breaking a U.S. document whereas he waited on a alternative Soyuz for a trip residence.
Except for being a “rescue mission” of kinds, Crew-9 will probably be historic for quite a lot of different causes. It will likely be the primary crewed launch to take off from Area Launch Advanced-40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Area Power Station in Florida, and solely the second crewed launch from the Area Power web site general, following Starliner’s CFT launch in June.
Crew-9 commander Nick Hague may also grow to be the first lively U.S. Area Power Guardian to launch to area because the department was established in 2019.
