Initially, NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore were meant to spend eight days aboard the International Space Station. However, the plan changed when NASA detected a series of problems in the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that was supposed to bring them back, which extended their stay. The mission began on June 5, and 75 days later, we still don’t know exactly when these NASA astronauts will set foot on Earth again.
Before making a decision, the space agency is evaluating all possible options. That includes a rather unlikely scenario where Williams and Wilmore might have to cross the atmosphere in a SpaceX spacecraft without their spacesuits, primarily that’s because they can’t wear Boeing suits on SpaceX spacecraft—and vice versa.
Why Are Boeing and SpaceX Suits Not Compatible With Other Spacecraft?
The ISS has two docking ports for commercial spacecraft. One is occupied by the Starliner spacecraft, and the other by a SpaceX Crew Dragon (Crew 8 mission). If NASA decides to send Williams and Wilmore back to Earth on a SpaceX spacecraft, Starliner would have to undock to return to our planet uncrewed. This move would allow Crew-9, scheduled to launch in September, to dock with additional suits.
Now, if the astronauts have leave the space station before the Crew-9 mission arrives, they could return aboard the Crew-8 mission spacecraft. However, they wouldn’t have spacesuits available. “The suits are not interchangeable,” Joel Montalbano, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for Space Operations, explained at a recent press conference.
Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams at the ISS.
It’s important to note that the spacesuits aren’t essential to the astronauts’ return to Earth. They’re a safety measure that provides extra protection for them in the event of a problem in the capsule, such as depressurization. Montalbano also pointed out that returning without the suits wouldn’t be ideal.
You might think this would all be easier if the suits were could be used on both ships. We don’t know why astronauts can’t use a Boeing suit on a SpaceX spacecraft. Still, it's understandable that each manufacturer decided to go its own way because NASA didn’t require a standard for its commercial crew program.
Everything indicates that NASA had contemplated all this thoroughly. The space agency wanted to have two very different transportation systems due to the concept of redundancy that it pushes to mitigate any problem. “We’ve seen in the past the importance, I think, of having that redundancy,” Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, said a while back.
This article was written by Javier Marquez and originally published in Spanish on Xataka.
Images | NASA
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