NASA officials may finally reveal on Saturday how Boeing’s Starliner rocket crew will return to Earth.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson is scheduled to appear at a live press conference. ET Saturday from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The news conference, which will be televised and streamed live, will take place about an hour after Nelson meets behind closed doors with NASA and Boeing officials to review flight readiness.
That means the public may know whether the Boeing Starliner crew will return to Earth on the spacecraft that carried them into orbit, or wait until February to board the SpaceX Dragon.
You can watch the press conference here:
Starliner Timeline: Two months after Starliner launch, astronauts still haven’t returned
A flight readiness review is a rare mid-mission process, but it has become imperative for flight engineers to determine whether the stranded Starliner can safely return astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Sunni” Williams to Earth — or whether the spacecraft will have to ditch without any humans on board.
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Other ways to watch NASA’s press conference
In contrast to recent Starliner press conferences, which were primarily aimed at the media, Saturday’s event will be widely public and will feature the NASA administrator himself.
The conference will be broadcast on NASA+ It will be broadcast on NASA TV, which will be broadcast by the agency. Sooon phase outIt can also be viewed on NASA AppAgency Website And for her YYouTube channel.
What happened to the Boeing Starliner?
The Starliner spacecraft encountered numerous problems even before it was finally able to launch on June 5 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on its first crewed test flight.
Wilmoore and Williams were supposed to stay aboard the ISS for just over a week before returning to Earth. But when they arrived at the orbiting outpost a day after launch, engineers discovered a series of helium leaks and problems with the spacecraft’s propulsion system that delayed Starliner’s return to Earth.
Amid the struggle over what to do with Starliner, NASA earlier decided to postpone the launch of SpaceX’s Crew 9.
The mission was scheduled to launch earlier in August to the space station on a routine flight to replace Crew-8, which has been on the ground since March. But because the four members of Crew-9 can’t reach the station until the Starliner-operated docking port is available, that mission won’t happen until Sept. 24, according to NASA. He said.
To avoid further delays, Starliner will have to undock by then, with or without a crew. Whether four or two astronauts will head to the ISS for the six-month Crew 9 cycle depends on whether Wilmore and Williams are on board Starliner when it departs.
If Starliner leaves empty and returns to Earth autonomously, Wilmohr and Williams will need space to board the return flight home on February 25 aboard Dragon once the Crew-9 team completes its shift.
Meanwhile, the astronauts spent their extended stay working side-by-side with the crew. Flight 71Conducting scientific research and assisting with maintenance work on the space station, NASA said.
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