Stranded In Space

The original mission

NASA’s proposed mission was that the two astronauts would lift off with their Boeing Starliner capsule being carried into space by the Atlas V rocket. The rocket would then separate from the Starliner, which would dock at the International Space Station.

The primary objective of this mission was to test the reliability of Starliner. If it had lived up to the expectations, it could then be used by NASA repeatedly as a new way of getting astronauts to space, and back to Earth.

The crew of this final demonstration flight with humans on board this in-development spacecraft for the first time, would then remain on board the ISS for eight days to work alongside the crew, before returning to Earth in the same Starliner. The return date was planned to be on 14 June.

Both Wilmore and Williams had already racked up spaceflight experience, with a combined total of 500 days in space over four missions (two each). This experience was part of why they were chosen for the mission, along with the fact that they have each been with NASA for around 25 years.

Read more about the mission in our Boeing Starliner blog.

Has this happened before?

This situation is unique for the most part, given that there have never been astronauts stuck in space for months after they should have returned to Earth due to a failure in their spacecraft.

However, in 1991 during the fall of the Soviet Union, a cosmonaut called Sergie Krikalev was left on the MIR space station for a total of 311 days, which was twice as long as expected. This was due to the country that sent him up no longer existing, and it was not for months later, until the Russian nation was created, that he could return to Earth.

Apollo 13 is another example of a mission that went wrong, but this one did not leave astronauts stuck in space. When two of three fuel cells blew whilst Apollo 13 was on its way to the Moon, NASA had to scramble to figure out how to use the damaged spacecraft to keep all three astronauts on board safe, and how to get them back to Earth, with only the spare parts up there with them available. This mission ended successfully, with the astronauts returning to Earth six days after lift-off, with no casualties or injuries.

There have also been examples of missions that have had fatal endings, such as Apollo 1 (which did not even make it to space) and the infamous Challenger explosion in 1986. Each failed mission results in an extensive investigation to discover the causes, and the Boeing Starliner is no different.

Starliner will remain docked whilst the astronauts, NASA and Boeing all continue to run tests to try to find the underlying cause of the reasons for the failure. As a test flight, it's not uncommon for challenges to arise - in fact, it's why test flights are part of human spaceflight procedure.

Once they have completed all the tests they can in space, the Starliner will return to Earth where it will be studied further. However, due to the way the Starliner functions, some of the parts that have failed will not survive the trip back to Earth and therefore will not be available for further studying. This means that as much analysis as possible will be done whilst the Boeing ship is still in space.