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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) acknowledged having “differences” with Boeing while discussing the return plan of astronauts Sunita Williams and Beech Wilmore.
Steve Stich, manager of the Commercial Crew Program at NASA Kennedy Space Center, said at a news conference late Wednesday that it was “a difficult decision” and “really hard to determine whether or not to remain without a crew.”
“I would say the teams were very divided…and [due to the] Uncertainty regarding thrusters… NASA team decided to send Butch and Suni back [SpaceX] Dragon,” Stitch said.
When asked if there was a “heated debate” or “almost a screaming match” between the NASA and Boeing teams during the meeting, Stich said, “I wouldn’t say it was a screaming meeting…it was a tense technical discussion…”, Stich said.
“In the last meeting we talked about technical data on different scenarios and analysis…I wouldn’t call it a heated meeting…whenever you have a meeting of this scale to make a decision like this, there is some tension in the room,” Stich said.
Further clarifying the issue, the NASA official said Boeing was confident in the model it had built, which attempted to prevent thruster degradation during the remainder of the flight.
But “the NASA team looked at the model and saw some limitations in it,” he said. “It was really about this – do we really trust the thrusters and how much we can protect our accretion from undocking through the deorbit burn. The NASA team couldn’t be comfortable with that because of the uncertainty in the modeling,” Stich said.
Meanwhile, International Space Station manager Dana Weigel clarified Boeing’s position, saying Boeing is “in a different position in terms of our understanding of the risks and the features that are available to us without Starliner.”
“So one of the reasons for the disagreement is… Boeing has said previously that… they can’t put pressure on that part of the agency (NASA),” Weigel said.
NASA decided to return Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft to Earth without its crew members Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore due to uncertainties related to the spacecraft.
NASA said on Wednesday that all preparations for the Starliner capsule’s descent from the space station on Friday evening are on track. The fully automated capsule will aim to land at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico six hours later.
Meanwhile, the two NASA astronauts who have flown on Starliner will remain aboard the orbiting lab. They will return home with SpaceX in February 2025, eight months after launch on what was supposed to be a week-long test flight.
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