Nine Months Later, Starliner Astronauts May Be Heading Home, Courtesy of SpaceX

It looks like the first step toward bringing the Boeing Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams home may finally be taken after SpaceX’s Crew-10 mission launched from Kennedy Space Center on Friday evening. That’s right, after yet another delay, Crew-10 was able to lift off around 6 p.m. CST...

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It looks like the first step toward bringing the Boeing Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams home may finally be taken after SpaceX’s Crew-10 mission launched from Kennedy Space Center on Friday evening.

That’s right, after yet another delay, Crew-10 was able to lift off around 6 p.m. CST.

The crew-swap mission which will tote four astronauts to the International Space Station, was originally slated to go up on Wednesday before an issue with the launchpad ground system forced NASA officials to scrub the launch. A ground support clamp arm on the Falcon 9 rocket had a hydraulic system issue, NASA officials stated.

The cancelled launch probably wouldn’t have gotten much attention – launches get scrubbed regularly due to everything from malfunctioning equipment to inclement weather – except that this particular launch is the first step in the process of finally bringing Wilmore and Williams home.

Williams and Wilmore – who joined NASA officials in recent weeks in insisting that they have not been “stranded” in space – set out on their journey last back in June for Boeing Starliner’s first crewed test flight. If things had gone well, the aerospace giant would have been able to be a true contender in the commercial spaceflight market that is currently dominated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, a victory that might even have made up for the fact that Boeing’s Starliner project was years behind schedule and well over its $4.8 billion fixed-price NASA contract. (As of February, Starliner has cost Boeing more than $2 billion.)

Of course, nothing went as planned. Although the launch went off without a hitch, by the time Starliner reached the ISS its thrusters were malfunctioning, and multiple helium leaks were discovered on the propulsion system. In the end, NASA and Boeing officials opted for Wilmore and Williams staying aboard the ISS, with Starliner returning home sans crew in September, stretching their eight-day mission into a months-long sojourn aboard the ISS.

Of late, their stay has been tinged with politics, with SpaceX CEO Musk and President Donald Trump claiming that the astronauts have been “stranded” on the space station, an interpretation of their situation that both the astronauts and NASA officials have stated is untrue.

Although it remains to be seen whether the two astronauts will be able to avoid being further entangled in political slants when they get to Earth, SpaceX’s Dragon should soon be bringing Wilmore and Williams home. If all goes well, Crew-10 will haul its crew of international astronauts to the ISS, arriving on Saturday. From there, Williams and Wilmore, along with two other members of Crew-9, will clamber aboard and begin their return flight next Wednesday, landing either Thursday or Friday.

All told, the pair will have logged about 288 days, or more than nine months, in space.

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