Stranded NASA astronauts have 'replaced' original ISS crew
Two NASA astronauts are right now facing an eight-month delay in their return to Earth after serious technical failures with Boeing's Starliner capsule.
Astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams boarded in June, but the mission ran into serious problems and NASA ultimately deemed the trip back to Earth unsafe, opting to delay the astronauts' return until February.
The pair are currently holed up on the International Space Station until that crew return home - but why do they have to wait so long?
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Butch and Suni will have to stay on the ISS until February. NASA
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Butch and Suni remain optimistic and former NASA ISS commander, Leroy Chiao, told Today they are well prepared for the long wait.
"They're very well trained, they have both flown long-duration missions aboard the ISS before, so this is nothing new to them," he said.
"They're doing great, the ISS team up there are definitely happy to have the extra set of hands to distribute the workload and Butch and Suni will basically be taking the place of two of the next crew coming up.
"In other words, crew nine is about to launch on SpaceX Dragon next month, instead of four people, they're going to only send up two, Butch and Suni will take those two people's places."
Leroy said NASA is working with Boeing to ensure the next Starliner mission will avoid these same problems. Today
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Leroy said while everything was analysed and designed for a successful trip, you never quite know exactly what's going to happen until you actually go and fly.
"So it's a little bit of a surprise that they found these problems, but you can bet a lot of engineers at Boeing are going back and relooking at things, and they're obviously going to have to do a redesign," he said.
"I think NASA is committed to helping Boeing to make this thing operational, get it working right and have it flying because NASA wants more than one supplier of a rocket and a spacecraft to be able to send astronauts to and bring them back from the ISS."
Hear more of what Leroy had to say in the video above
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