Dubbed by the media and some political figures as a “rescue mission,” NASA’s four-person Crew-10 lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour at 7:03 p.m. on March 14.
Probably the closest-watched of the SpaceX missions to the ISS so far, the Crew-10 mission was both a routine crew rotation mission and something far more. Since June of last year, two NASA astronauts had been aboard the ISS following an arguably failed flight test of Boeing’s Starliner.
Starliner was supposed to have been a short eight-day mission, but it didn’t turn out that way. With the arrival of Crew-10, NASA would finally return to Earth the widely publicized “stranded” astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.
Were Wilmore and Williams really stranded? Well, that depends on how you choose to look at it. With political overtones of government contracts, cost overruns, delays, and presidential politics, the until now smooth-running ISS crew rotations were thrust into the limelight and had become a national drama of the highest order. To understand the whole story, we have to go back to 2011. Here’s how it happened:
The Back Story
NASA found itself in a quandary when it retired the Space Shuttle in 2011. Without a way of getting our astronauts to and from the space station, America had to rely entirely on Russia to do the job.
In 2014, NASA awarded Boeing a $4.2 billion contract to build the Starliner, with the goal of regularly transporting astronauts to the ISS. The Starliner was to be one of two US crew transportation systems, alleviating the need to rely on Russia to transport our astronauts to space. At the same time, SpaceX was awarded a second, much smaller grant to develop Crew Dragon for the same purpose. By 2020, SpaceX had the Crew Dragon fully operational and flight-certified. Boeing meanwhile, still struggled with delays and cost issues. Starliner’s first two test flights, which were not crewed, were far from successful by any standard. The first flight was pretty much a complete failure, plagued by sloppy software programming. The second test flight was better than the first but still revealed numerous problems.
Despite the problems on the first two uncrewed flights, NASA and Boeing decided to press ahead with a crewed test. A seemingly risky proposition at best, Boeing’s back was up against the wall to deliver, and NASA had invested a lot of money and political capital in making Starliner work.
The plan was simple – to fly astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station on an eight-day test flight of Starliner. The objective was to test all of Starliner’s onboard systems and to get Starliner certified for routine human spaceflight missions – exactly what SpaceX’s Crew Dragon was already doing, but building a “dissimilar redundancy” into America’s launch capability.
From the beginning, problems with Starliner manifested themselves, with the launch being scrubbed multiple times. A manufacturer of valve components even warned that a NASA contractor did not adequately test the valves and that there was a high potential for catastrophe on the launch pad. Despite the warning and some “quick-fixed” problems,” the launch schedule pressed ahead.
Wilmore and Williams Finally Launch – And Problems Began
Following a scrubbed launch on May 6, 2024, due to a “buzzing valve” on the second stage, Wilmore and Williams finally launched on June 5, 2024. By the time the pair approached docking with the ISS 24 hours later, several of the craft’s 52 thrusters had shown signs of being intermittent or inoperable. Additionally, the craft was leaking helium, which was needed to operate the thrusters. The thruster problems were not something to be overlooked, as they were required to properly align the craft for three critical mission phases: docking, undocking, and reentry. An error in any one of these in a crucial moment could have spelled disaster. After recycling several of the thrusters, Starliner was able to dock with the ISS. The craft was immediately powered down to minimize the helium leak.
Homecoming Delayed
Now, flight controllers and engineers on the ground were faced with a decision: Could the Starliner safely return its crew to Earth? So began the quest to gather more data. The days turned into weeks as NASA and Boeing’s engineers debated whether Wilmore and Williams should attempt a return on the Starliner. While Boeing engineers ultimately believed the capsule was safe and advocated for their return, NASA engineers weren’t so sure.
Following lessons learned after the Challenger and Columbia tragedies, NASA management sided with their own engineers. Acting on the side of caution, the decision was made to return Starliner to Earth without the crew on board.
Now, NASA had a new problem. The four astronauts of Crew-8, which had already been on the station for several months, were due to come home soon and the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule docked to the ISS could only carry four astronauts. To complicate things further, Wilmore and Williams had arrived at the station wearing Boeing’s space suits designed for Starliner, but they weren’t compatible with SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.
Starliner Crew Conscripted For Crew 9
Officials decided the best course of action was to leave Wilmore and Williams onboard the ISS and remove two of the four astronauts from the upcoming Crew-9 roster, who were due to relieve Crew-8 in August. Wilmore and Williams were told they would spend the interim time learning crew duties and assisting with ISS science and maintenance tasks until Crew-9 members Nick Hague and Alexander Gorbunov could join them in August. At that time, they would become part of Crew-9.
The lousy news… the Starliner astronauts were now conscripts. They weren’t going home anytime soon. Wilmore and Williams’ integration with Crew 9 meant they were there for the duration of that mission and now wouldn’t be coming home until February 2025.
As is often the case in space flight, the launch of Crew-9 ended up being delayed for a month, and the rest of the Crew-9 team didn’t arrive until late September – one month later than planned. Crew-9’s arrival finally freed the four astronauts of Crew-8 to head for home aboard Crew Dragon Freedom after now having spent an extra month in space themselves.
Wilmore and Williams, the consummate professionals, seemed to take their now extended mission in stride. Both had already served on extended missions to the ISS during the shuttle era, so living long-term in space was nothing new to them. It just wasn’t planned this time. The pair publicly stated that they always knew that an extended mission was a possibility. But over the next few months, there were times when they looked and sounded tired in TV broadcasts, raising speculation by some that William’s health was failing.
It is important to point out here that from the time the Crew Dragon Endurance arrived with the other members of Crew-9 (and two extra space suits), Endurance remained safely docked at the ISS. Had any true emergency arisen, all four astronauts could have boarded it at any time for a return to Earth.
Media and Politicians Run Wild
Meanwhile, here on earth, “silly season” was alive and well in the run-up to the 2024 Presidential election, with seemingly every politician in the country wanting to publish their own version of whether or not Wilmore and Williams had been “stranded” or “abandoned.” As you might expect, each side blamed the other for political shenanigans, resulting in the Starliner Crew’s long stay in space. NASA, all along, maintained steady messaging that the pair would be brought home when Crew-9 came back in February. As you might expect, the media would have none of it. Each outlet ran with the most sensational headlines they could conjure up.
The presidential election came and went, but neither the media nor politicians were inclined to give up the political rhetoric. Unfortunately for NASA, SpaceX was forced to announce in January that the Crew-9 return would be delayed until March due to issues processing the Endeavour in time for the Crew-10 launch. This only added fuel to the media fire. It didn’t seem to matter to the media or anyone else that Crew-9’s Endurance capsule had been safely docked to the ISS since September 2024 and could have safely brought back all four astronauts at any time in an emergency. While some believed NASA should have done precisely that, it simply wasn’t practical to disrupt the entire six-month Crew-9 mission as well as the “ripple effect” on future missions, not to mention the disruption of daily ISS operations.
President Donald Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social on January 28: “I have just asked Elon Musk and @SpaceX to ‘go get’ the two brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration.” What Trump was referring to was the Crew-10 mission, which was already on the schedule. What Trump seemed to be advocating for was moving up the timeline and launching Crew-10 a few weeks earlier than the then-scheduled late March launch date.
On February 13, astronaut Butch Wilmore reemphasized in a broadcast from space that they were not abandoned, stating, “We don’t feel abandoned. We don’t feel stuck. We don’t feel stranded. I understand why others may think that. We come prepared. We come committed. That is what your human space flight program is. It prepares for any and all contingencies that we can conceive of, and we prepare for those. So if you’ll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative, let’s change it to prepared and committed like what you’ve been hearing. That’s what we prefer.”
SpaceX owner Elon Musk even jumped into the fray, publicly sparring with astronauts and politicians on social media.
Crew-10 Finally Launches
Space-X agreed to move the launch date up after Trump’s proclamation, but the change had less to do with Trump’s edict than SpaceX’s ability to have a new version of the Crew Dragon ready. The company had been planning to fly it on the Crew-10 mission, but it was beginning to appear it wouldn’t be ready on time. In early February, SpaceX decided to use one of the current generation Crew Dragons for the mission, which could be readied in a matter of weeks.
NASA astronauts Commander Anne McClain, Mission Pilot Nichole Ayers, and Mission Specialists JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov launched on March 14 and arrived at the ISS the next day. With the new crew safely on board to take over the reins of the space station, NASA was back on schedule.
Starliner Crew Finally Comes Home
A few days after Crew-10 arrived, Crew Dragon Freedom undocked from the Space Station on March 18, bringing the long-aloft Starliner crew home. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams had logged 285 days in space after launching on their original 8-day mission. On the return flight with them was the rest of Crew-9, Commander Nick Hague and Roscosmos Cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, who had spent 171 days in space.
Hailing their unplanned mission as a success, Williams said, “While our stay was longer than planned, it provided us with unique opportunities to engage in additional research and strengthen international collaborations.”
Finally splashing down in the Gulf of America near Florida’s Big Bend, one thing is sure – all on board were glad to be home.
