The next International Space Station (ISS) crew is set to launch today, commanded by an astronaut who gave up her Crew-9 seat to make way for the Boeing Starliner test team.
The four-person line-up of the SpaceX Dragon, set to launch on July 31 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is commanded by Zena Cardman. Cardman, alongside Stephanie Wilson, was reassigned from Crew-9 to make way for the return of Boeing Starliner astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore.
NASA had decided to keep the Starliner astronauts on the ISS for an extended stay after determining that returning the pair in Boeing’s Calamity Capsule was not worth the risk. There were several issues on the Crew Flight Test of the Starliner, most notably malfunctioning thrusters. After weighing the options, the US space agency opted to return the Starliner without a crew.
The need for seats to accommodate Williams and Wilmore meant that Cardman and Wilson were removed from the Crew-9 flight.
Cardman is joined on the mission by pilot Mike Fincke, a Space Shuttle veteran who was initially tapped to fly with Wilmore and Williams on the Starliner Crew Flight Test until NASA decided to reduce the number of ‘nauts on the mission to two. Fincke was then assigned to fly on the Starliner’s first operational mission, before being made pilot on the Crew-11 mission.
JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov round out Crew-11.
The static fire of the Falcon 9 rocket, to be used for the mission, was halted on July 28 due to an error with the position indication of the transporter erector’s cradle arm. The test was completed successfully on the following day.
It all stands in marked contrast to the woes of Boeing’s Starliner, which is not set to launch again until 2026 and is very unlikely to carry a crew until NASA’s engineers are happy with the work done to understand, rectify, or mitigate the issues observed during the Crew Flight Test.
During a news conference on July 10, Steve Stich, NASA’s manager for the Commercial Crew Program, said that the goal was to get to ISS crew rotation flights using the Boeing Starliner by the end of 2026.
Such an aim would leave little time until the ISS is scheduled for retirement, and the Starliner would require a new destination. In 2024, SpaceX was awarded a contract by NASA to deorbit the ISS in 2030. ®