After nearly a one year, unscheduled, stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS), two Boeing Starliner astronauts, Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Suni Williams, have returned to planet earth.The rescue mission, executed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX’ Dragon Freedom craft, splashed down in the Gulf of America on March 18, 2025.
Hello, Ken Baxter, AKA Rocketman here, coming to you on this lovely spring day from beautiful, Las Vegas, Nevada, we’re glad to see you here..
The Starliner craft, behind schedule and over budget, with Astronauts aboard, docked at ISS on June 6, 2024. During the planned 8 day mission, former Navy test pilots, Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Suni Williams were to perform a series of tests needed to achieve operational crew certification. Although the Starliner craft was able to dock at the ISS, the problems with the craft made it impossible for them, or anyone else to leave. Little did they know, the same problems that had caused their original mission, scheduled for May of 2024 to be aborted and rescheduled to June would turn 8 days into nearly a year.
Watch Splashdown of SpaceX Dragon Craft
Days turned into months. As Reuters reported “NASA has rescheduled the planned return three times, and now has no date set for it. Since its June 5 liftoff, the capsule has had five helium leaks, five maneuvering thrusters go dead and a propellant valve fail to close completely, prompting the crew in space and mission managers in Houston to spend more time than expected pursuing fixes mid-mission.”
The fuel leaks and thruster problems plaguing the Starliner craft, in the end made it too dangerous for the crew to use to return to earth. The troubled Boeing craft, the Calypso, touched down in the New Mexico desert in early September of 2024, 7 months before the stranded crew of two were returned to earth.
SpaceX, is one of the few companies with the ability of transporting supplies to the ISS for several years and in 2020 began transporting crew members as well. Rumors surfaced during the 2024 Presidential Campaign that the rescue of the crew had been put on hold by the Biden administration, soon after Elon Musk threw his support behind Donald Trump.
The future for Boeing’s space transportation ambitions is not clear, the nature of the defects are severe and it looks like they may be delayed for quite some time, maybe even back to the drawing board.
As millions watched the rescue of the stranded crew and the splashdown in the Gulf America, a pod of dolphins surrounded the capsule welcoming the crew of four back to earth (2 castaways and 2 returning astronauts from the ISS).
It’s a relief to see a happy ending; I know that there are always risks to space travel even for a crew with years of experience.
Ken Baxter, signing off and thank you again for stopping by. Don’t forget to visit KenBaxter.com, Green Global and WeThePeople.com for additional updates and interesting content, and I hope to see you again real soon!
