With more than two decades since the last human spaceflight disaster, the final frontier is safer than ever. That does not mean however, that space travel is free from blunders. This is still a rough and punishing environment, and as many like to state when defending their favorite organization, space is hard.
It should not come as no surprise that after years of squeaky clean trips to and from the International Space Station, something went wrong. During the first crewed flight of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft, NASA discovered problems with one of the spacecraft’s thrusters, and was unable to determine the root cause of the issue. Because of this, the crew’s return was delayed, repeatedly until a planned eight-day trip became a two month stay.
By this point, NASA was forced to make a decision: return the two astronauts (Barry E. (Butch) Wilmore and Sunita Willams) on the Starliner with potentially unknown risk or return the spacecraft uncrewed and find another way to get the astronauts home.
During a live press conference on August 24, NASA announced its decision. “NASA has decided that Butch and Suni will return with Crew-9,” says NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “The decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring Boeing’s Starliner home uncrewed is the result of our commitment to safety”.
Crew-9, due to launch in late September, would require some major changes to its mission plan, primarily, it would require two astronauts to be booted from to make room for Butch and Suni.
The two remaining astronauts, Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov, arrived at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Saturday, September 21 in order to begin pre-launch preparations and quarantine.
Four days later, they walked out of the Operations and Checkouts Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and made their way to SLC-40 where they boarded their spacecraft.
Once buckled in place, and after some questionable weather that threatened to scrub the launch, Crew-9 blasted off into the stars aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, docking with the ISS just under a day later.
For the next five months, all four astronauts will conduct science experiments and perform research in the microgravity environment of space. After their eight-day mission has been stretched to eight months, the four members of Crew-9 will splashdown just off the coast of Florida, completing the first successful rescue mission from the ISS in its history.
While the frequency of missions may lead some to suspect that space travel has become routine, it is still a dynamic and ever-shifting environment. When asked how this mission would teach NASA and SpaceX to better adapt to change, astronaut Nick Hague responded “[I]f you look at the history of human spaceflight, the constant is change.” He went on to say, “[T]he result of us being ready to launch is just a testament that the systems, the teams, the people, they know how to respond to change…”.
Spaceflight remains as dangerous and dynamic an environment as ever. What has evolved however, is humanity’s ability to respond in ever more subtle ways. The very fact that after a single spacecraft was deemed unsafe to return crew, then a second, flight-proven spacecraft could have its mission reconfigured to bring that crew home is itself a testament to how far humanity has come in our journey to the stars.