“Suits are available for Butch and Suni.”

Hitch Hikers

The return date of NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who traveled to the International Space Station on board Boeing’s plagued Starliner spacecraft over seven weeks ago, keeps getting pushed back.

Engineers have been hard at work investigating several helium leaks that officials discovered both before leaving Earth — they went ahead with the launch anyway — and after the pair arrived at the station, affecting the spacecraft’s propulsion system.

NASA has yet to announce a return date, showing that the problems are clearly ongoing. In fact, the agency is reportedly preparing a contingency plan that involves making room for Wilmore and Williams on an upcoming SpaceX Crew Dragon launch to the ISS.

“It’s clear NASA does not want to deviate from its base plan of using Starliner to come home, and this remains most likely,” Ars Technica‘s Eric Berger tweeted. “But it is not certain. SpaceX and NASA have been quietly studying launching Crew-9 two astronauts. Suits are available for Butch and Suni.”

Rescue Dragon

Crew-9 is tentatively scheduled for next month, and NASA will reveal further details during a briefing later today.

The option of having the two stranded astronauts return on board a Crew Dragon spacecraft must’ve been a relatively recent discussion. During a July 10 press conference, NASA’s Commercial Crew program manager Steve Stich said that “there’s really been no discussion with sending another Dragon to rescue the Starliner crew.”

But at the time, Stich stopped well short of ruling out such a possibility.

“The beautiful thing about the commercial crew program is that we have two vehicles, two different systems, that we could use to return crew,” he added. “So we have a little bit more time to go through the data and then make a decision as to whether we need to do anything different.”

In the meantime, engineers back on the ground have been testing spare thrusters to see if they can recreate the helium leak issues, an investigation that concluded earlier this week.

But even armed with the new data, NASA still isn’t ready to announce a date for Williams and Wilmore’s return, casting doubt on its confidence in Boeing’s much-maligned spacecraft.

During a press conference this week, Stich said that “we’re making great progress, but we’re just not quite ready” to pinpoint a date, suggesting the pair would return no sooner than the first week of August.

But time is running out. Starliner’s battery life was extended past 45 days, with the mission now being officially rated for 90 days, giving NASA and Boeing until September 3 at the latest.

And SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft is waiting in the wings, ready to give Wilmore and Williams a ride back home.

More on Starliner: Boeing’s Starliner Stuck at the ISS Until at Least August, NASA Admits