NASA has delayed the return of two astronauts from the International Space Station (ISS) for the third time, raising concerns the crew could be ‘stranded.’
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were initially scheduled for a nine-day stay, which was pushed back twice this month and now sits at an undetermined date.
The extended stay is to allow more time for review of technical issues encountered by the capsule as it traveled to the ISS, which included thruster failures and leaking valves, Boeing said in a statement.
DailyMail.com spoke with several experts who said that NASA could be forced to launch a rescue mission, and could tap Elon Musk‘s SpaceX to carry it out.
Rudy Ridolfi, Former Space System Commander and Space Technology Acquisition Manager, told DailyMail.com on Monday that Boeing may be forced to abandon Starliner and use one of SpaceX’s Dragon capsules to bring the two astronauts home.
‘Boeing will still want the capsule back. The service module is the part with all the problems and they will lose that on reentry no matter what they do,’ Ridolfi said.
‘The capsule though, it can be returned, autonomously to a hard landing in the US and recovered.’
