As NASA weighs one of its most consequential decisions in years — whether to fly home a pair of astronauts on Boeing’s troubled Starliner spacecraft or on SpaceX’s more proven Dragon capsule — the specter of past tragedies looms large.
The agency has repeatedly said that the decision, which is expected to come by next week, will be guided by hard data, rigorous engineering analysis and the safety of NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore. Also at stake: the prestige of the space agency and the reputation of Boeing.
There could be significant political consequences as well. Vice President Kamala Harris’s role as head of the National Space Council puts her at the top of the nation’s space policy hierarchy. And the orbital drama is playing out amid a tight presidential race against Donald Trump.
Harris has not said anything publicly on the Starliner situation, and the Space Council does not want “to influence a decision with two human lives at stake,” said a person close to the Space Council, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to speak publicly about internal deliberations. “It’s not a policy decision, it’s a technical decision.”
Still, Harris is closely following the situation and is being kept updated on developments, officials with knowledge of the situation said.
Unlike many agencies in the federal government, NASA is afforded a rare level of independence that allows its leaders to make decisions that can be politically unpopular. The ethos of the agency was molded in part during the disasters of space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, which cost the lives of 14 astronauts combined, and imbued in the agency a culture of safety.
Given all that is at stake, NASA cannot afford to allow any sort of political influence to sway it, said Todd Harrison, an aerospace and defense analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.
“I have no doubt that the decision that’s made will be a decision based on the safety of the crew first and foremost,” he said. “I don’t think politics would play any role in that.”
He added, however, that “the Harris campaign is likely paying a lot of attention to it and watching it carefully. Because as chair of the Space Council, she’s going to bear some culpability if something were to go tragically wrong.”
Given the importance of the mission, the vice president and the Space Council should demonstrate more visible leadership to make it clear that “the process is serious, involves all of government and has presidential-level authorization,” said Mark Albrecht, who served as the head of the Space Council under President George H.W. Bush. “This is not what I would call a profile in courage, competency or leadership.”
The vice president’s office did not respond to a request for comment. A NASA spokesperson said in a statement that “Vice President Harris and the National Space Council staff receive frequent updates on NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test. While the National Space Council works closely with civil, national security, commercial, and international partners to advance the Nation’s space priorities, it does not make operational spaceflight safety recommendations or decisions.”
Starliner launched on June 5 for what was billed as an eight-day stay on the International Space Station to test how the vehicle performed with its first crew on board. As it approached the station, however, several of the thrusters failed, and the propulsion system suffered a series of helium leaks. The crew took manual control of the vehicle while engineers on the ground worked to shut off the thrusters and bring them back online.
In the weeks since, NASA and Boeing have tried to get to the root of the problem to ensure the return flight is safe. But there has been profound disagreement among the engineers that in an exceedingly rare occurrence has become public. Boeing has maintained that the vehicle is safe to fly. NASA has proceeded more cautiously, asking for additional tests and data before making its decision.
If the crew flies home with SpaceX instead, Starliner would return to Earth without anyone on board, NASA officials have said. Wilmore and Williams would then fly home as part of SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission, which means NASA would be forced to bump two astronauts from that crew to make room for Williams and Wilmore for the ride home. That mission is scheduled to launch to the station in September, but it wouldn’t return until February, meaning Wilmore and Williams mission would last about eight months total.
The deadline for a decision, however, is coming soon. NASA initially said that the batteries on the Starliner could last up to 45 days. They’ve since said the life of the batteries could be extended, but not indefinitely. “We’re reaching a point where that last week in August, we really should be making a call, if not sooner,” Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, said during a briefing last week.
The more time that has passed, the more NASA has said it is leaning toward using SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, which has been ferrying crews to the station since 2020, to get the crew home.
That is a dramatic departure from how Boeing and NASA initially characterized the situation. They repeatedly said they had “confidence” in the Starliner and that they intended to allow Boeing to return Williams and Wilmore, despite the problems. Initially, the company downplayed the thruster failures and helium leaks as the sort of routine issues expected in a test flight.
“Those are pretty small issues to deal with, and we’ll figure them out for the next mission,” Mark Nappi, a Boeing vice president and Starliner program manager, said at the time. “I don’t see those as significant at all.”
More recently, NASA officials have said the open disagreement among the teams and the fact that they are taking their time making a decision is a sign of the lessons learned after the fatal space shuttle Challenger and Columbia disasters. Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff in 1986, while Columbia came apart as it returned to Earth in 2003. Subsequent investigations found the tragedies were caused as much by cultural issues within the agency that stifled internal dissent as the hardware failures.
“This robust exchange of viewpoints is a necessary aspect of the healthy safety culture that’s important to the success of human spaceflight. I see that this is occurring as it should,” Russ DeLoach, NASA’s chief of safety and mission assurance, said during the briefing last week. “I’ve been hyper-focused on this concept of combating organizational silence. If you look at both — Challenger and Columbia — you can see cases where people had the right data or a valid position to put forward, but the environment just didn’t allow it. … I recognize that that may mean at times we don’t move very fast because we’re getting everything out.”
The astronauts, both of whom are retired Navy captains, have been briefed continuously, said Joe Acaba, the chief of the astronaut office, and will stay on the station as long as NASA needs them to and downplayed concerns about the difficulty of having a mission extended from eight days to eight months.
“They are receiving a lot of information that we are reviewing here on the ground,” he said. “They will do what we ask them to do, and that’s their job as astronauts.”
He conceded that such a long extension is difficult, but he said it was something all astronauts prepare for.
“We are humans, and this is hard on crew members and their families, and we take that in account,” he said. “But as professional astronauts they are prepared for this, and they’re doing great.”