NASA astronauts stranded on ISS as Boeing Starliner faces propulsion crisis

Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore arrived at the International Space Station in June expecting to stay eight days. More than two months later, they remain in orbit, waiting to learn whether the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that carried them there can safely bring them home.

The problem is mechanical and stubborn. During ground testing, engineers discovered leaks in the Starliner's propulsion system and found that several thrusters had shut down unexpectedly. The spacecraft's behavior in space has only deepened the mystery—up there, the thrusters are working fine, which makes the engineers less confident, not more. They cannot yet explain the physics of what went wrong. Until they do, NASA leadership has grown increasingly skeptical that Williams and Wilmore should ride the Starliner back to Earth. Ken Bowersox, NASA's director of space operations, acknowledged in a press conference last week that the odds of returning the spacecraft without a crew have improved slightly as engineers gathered more data. "We know that at some point we need to bring Butch and Suni home," he said. But not yet.

The emerging plan is to send the Starliner back empty and dispatch a SpaceX Crew Dragon—a four-seat capsule carrying only two astronauts—to retrieve Williams and Wilmore in February 2025. This means the two experienced pilots will remain on the station for eight additional months, well beyond their original timeline. The extended stay creates logistical complications. Four other NASA astronauts are scheduled to return to Earth in September, which would leave the station with its standard crew of seven: four Americans and three Russian cosmonauts. More people consume more supplies, more water, more food. "In some point, we need to get back to normal crew size," Bowersox explained. Yet for now, the math works. The station has seven bedrooms and three bathrooms. Water is plentiful. A recent resupply mission stocked the pantry generously.

Astronaut Victor Glover, who spent six months on the station in 2020-2021, offered perspective in an interview before the Starliner launched. "The space station has, actually, seven bedrooms and three bathrooms," he noted. The view from the windows, he suggested, is mesmerizing enough to make astronauts forget to work. Nicole Stott, another veteran of the station, once told him she had to set an alarm to remind herself to return to her tasks after gazing at Earth. Ken Kremer, who covers space launches from Florida, pushed back against the language of being "stranded." "The astronauts are happy up there," he said. "Many people think they're trapped, but they're not. This never should have been an eight-day mission. Both have done six-month missions before."

Williams and Wilmore are among NASA's most seasoned astronauts. Rather than idle away the months, mission planners have woven them into the station's daily rhythm. They conduct scientific experiments, perform maintenance, repair spacesuits, and help with the unglamorous work of organizing cargo and cleaning equipment racks. They even celebrated the Paris Olympics by playing sports in microgravity. Their plumbing skills in zero gravity have proven invaluable: a recent failure in the system that recycles urine into drinking water left the crew storing waste in containers—not ideal in already tight quarters. Williams and Wilmore have been working to repair it using spare parts they brought and additional equipment from the resupply mission.

This situation, while unusual, is not unprecedented. In May 1991, Soviet cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev launched to the Mir space station expecting a few months in orbit. Within weeks, the Soviet Union began to collapse. Tanks rolled through Moscow. A hardline communist coup attempt unfolded while Krikalev orbited above. "My wife worked in mission control, and they were worried about us, and we were worried about them," Krikalev recalled in an interview years later. "We heard about all this turbulence on the ground, all this instability." Four months passed. The Soviet Union dissolved entirely. The launch and landing facility moved to newly independent Kazakhstan. Krikalev and his crewmate Aleksandr Volkov remained in space for nearly a year while their government negotiated the terms of their return. Krikalev eventually became the first Russian to fly on the Space Shuttle and among the first to live on the ISS.

No one at NASA is in panic mode. The agency is methodically gathering data, running tests, and preparing contingencies. A final decision on whether to bring the Starliner back with or without its crew will take several more weeks. But as space missions grow more sophisticated and aim for the Moon and beyond, similar scenarios will almost certainly recur. Victor Glover is scheduled to pilot the Artemis 2 mission next year, the first crewed flight to leave Earth's orbit since 1972. "We would be doing a disservice to our profession and to the public if we made it seem like what we do is routine," Glover said. "When we board the tenth Starliner mission, it will be equally complicated and complex."