NASA will have to spend money on travel expenses for astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Apparently, they will spend at least another month and a half in space. They flew there for a week, but in the end they would spend about five months there – almost a full-time shift. This is hinted at by the postponement of the launch of the next shift of astronauts on the Crew Dragon ship from August 18 to at least September 24 – this has never happened in the history of launches.
Image source: NASA
The day before, NASA confirmed that the Crew-9 mission would be delayed until September 24 or longer. However, the agency did not specify whether two or four crew members would fly on the ship. Theoretically, Butch and Suni could return to Earth one at a time on Crew-8 and Crew-9 as the fifth member of each crew, if SpaceX allows such overloading of its ships. It will also mean that some of the duty crew will have to stay in orbit for another six months before Crew-9 returns normally. In general, NASA management will have to solve the non-standard problem of returning people to Earth if the Boeing Starliner ship is returned home without a crew.
The return of Starliner in automatic mode and the delay in the launch of the Crew-9 mission are closely related. NASA does not talk about this openly, but the software installed on board the ship will not allow it to undock from the ISS on its own. Programs must be updated, tested and certified to place Starliner in automatic return mode. This requires a minimum of four weeks. Therefore, there is no point in sending two or four more astronauts to a station overloaded with a crew until the problematic ship is completely ready to descend to Earth, with or without people.
The final decision on the return of Butch Wilmore and Sunya Williams on a Boeing or SpaceX ship will be made solely by current NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. Maybe we’ll hear it tonight. The agency scheduled a press conference at 12:30 local time (August 7 at 19:30 Moscow time).