NASA's Starliner astronauts to achieve feat, technically, during SpaceX Dragon relocation

Editors' notes

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

fact-checked

reputable news agency

proofread

A parking spot shuffle coming up this weekend more than 250 miles above Earth will mark a unique feat for a pair of NASA astronauts who will become the first to fly in both Boeing's Starliner and SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft.

NASA's Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who flew up to the International Space Station in Starliner, but remained on board when NASA opted to return it back to Earth without a crew, are now part of the four-member crew that will fly home on the SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom next year.

Freedom arrived on the ISS on Sept. 29 with just two crew—NASA's Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov —leaving room for Wilmore and Williams on that flight home targeting February 2025.

But because parking space is limited at the ISS, all four will climb on board early Sunday for a short trip moving from the Crew Dragon Freedom from the front-facing port of the space station's Harmony module, and redock it to the space-facing port of the same module.

That will make room for the planned launch of a SpaceX Cargo Dragon on the CRS-31 mission launching from Kennedy Space Center's Space Launch Complex 39-A as early as 9:29 p.m. Monday carrying 6,000 pounds of supplies.

The ISS has only two ports capable of parking either SpaceX Dragon or Boeing Starliner spacecraft. The Russian side of the station has its own spots for Soyuz crewed vehicles and Progress cargo vehicles, while the Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo spacecraft can connect on the ISS' Unity module.

For Dragon and Starliner, NASA prefers to bring on new spacecraft to the forward-facing port, so each time a new ship is coming, they have to move the one that's already there.

So, while Crew Dragon Freedom's trip will take less than an hour, it will be the first time Williams and Wilmore will have traveled in it under its own propulsion.

It will also mark their fourth spacecraft within which they will have traveled, not including the ISS, as both had previously flown on both space shuttle and Soyuz missions.

That's similar to the record set by NASA's John Young, who flew in four spacecraft. He flew on two Gemini missions, two Apollo missions, one with a landing on the moon, so it meant a ride down and back up to the surface in the Apollo lunar lander, and then two missions of the Space Shuttle Program, including the first.

Because of the moon lander's liftoff from the lunar surface, Young would still hold the record for the number of different spacecraft launching off of the surface of a planet or moon.

Other astronauts have at least been inside at least four spacecraft in space, as they are either assigned duties such as unloading cargo from visiting vessels like Cygnus and Dragon, or get a little tour from their fellow space station crew of the ships they flew up on.

The first person to be inside any of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft in space was when NASA astronaut Bob Hines floated in after the uncrewed Orbital Flight Test 2 in 2022 after it docked with the ISS when he was part of Expedition 67.

The ISS is now amidst Expedition 72, having been continuously occupied since Nov. 2, 2000.

SpaceX and Boeing were awarded contracts under NASA's Commercial Crew Program to provide U.S.-based launches to and from the ISS until it's decommissioned.

SpaceX is now in its ninth rotational mission, having flown the test Demo-2 mission in 2000 followed by operational flights about every six months since. It has Crew-10 scheduled for February and Crew-11 for as early as next July.

Boeing, meanwhile, was unable to complete its version of the Demo-2 flight called the Crew Flight Test this summer, four years after SpaceX accomplished the feat, but could still find a way to certification by NASA to begin operational missions beginning with Starliner-1 before the end of 2025.

NASA and Roscosmos, meanwhile, continue to do seat swap missions, allowing for cosmonauts to ride up on the Crew Dragon flights while astronauts take one of the three seats on board the Soyuz missions.

2024 Orlando Sentinel. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.