It has affected the decision today by this collective group and all of those that participated in the Flight Test Readiness Review this morning,” Nelson said. “It is trying to turn around the culture that first led to the loss of Challenger and then led to the loss of Columbia, where obvious mistakes were not being brought forth.”
Two fatal spaceflight disasters influenced NASA’s thinking on how the Starliner astronauts should return home.
NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who launched to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on June 5, will now return to Earth no earlier than February 2025 aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule, rather than journey home on Starliner.
The first crewed Starliner flight was initially billed as an eight-day mission to the ISS. But its stay in orbit has been extended numerous times due to concerns surrounding the spacecraft’s thrusters. The eventual decision to send Williams and Wilmore home on the SpaceX Crew-9 mission, which NASA announced over the weekend, was informed by lessons from the agency’s two space shuttle disasters.
Asked in a press conference on Saturday if the Challenger and Columbia accidents influenced his personal decision, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson confirmed to reporters that this was indeed the case.
The Columbia disaster occurred on Feb. 1, 2003, when the space shuttle Columbia broke apart during atmospheric reentry. That was determined to be caused by a large piece of foam falling from the shuttle’s external tank during launch, damaging the orbiter’s wing. That followed the catastrophic launch failure of the space shuttle Challenger in January 1986. Both incidents caused the loss of all crew onboard, killing 14 astronauts in total.
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