Nasa astronauts from Starliner mission readjust to Earth, resume work with Boeing

WASHINGTON: After nine months in space, Nasa astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are readjusting to Earth life with dog walks and family time, while resuming work with Boeing to test the capsule that stranded them on the International Space Station (ISS).

"It's great getting back. I went for a run - although very slow," Williams said in an interview in Houston on Monday. "Just felt good to feel air, even though it was humid air, like blowing past you, and seeing other people on the track, it's really nice. It's home."

Wilmore and Williams, the first crew to ride Boeing's faulty Starliner spacecraft last summer, spent days undergoing routine medical checks by Nasa's astronaut office after returning to Earth on a SpaceX capsule in March and before they reunited with their families.

The two astronauts plan to meet with Boeing leaders on Wednesday to discuss Starliner, Wilmore said, resuming their role as some of Boeing's most valuable advisers on the craft's development.

"We had a very unique perspective of being in the spacecraft - nobody else had that perspective," Williams said, adding that she and Wilmore in their talks with Boeing will be "discussing where we stand and where we think we need to go" in Starliner's development.

Propulsion system issues on the Starliner forced Nasa to bring the capsule back without its crew last year and fold the two astronauts into the rotation schedule on the ISS. What was supposed to be an eight-day test mission swelled to a nine-month contingency plan that turned into a global spectacle fixated on Wilmore and Williams' safety.

Nasa and Boeing plan to ground-test Starliner's propulsion system this summer and expect to fly the spacecraft again in early 2026 in a test flight that agency officials have suggested could be uncrewed, before it flies humans again.

That would be Boeing's third uncrewed test in a bumpy development programme that has cost the company more than $2 billion since 2016.

"I think that is already the plan, because there will be new components added to the spacecraft or replaced on the spacecraft. So we'd really like to test that out, see how that works," Williams said, when asked if she would like to see Starliner fly an uncrewed mission.

"I think that's probably a smart, wise idea," she added.

The two veteran Nasa astronauts, both former US Navy test pilots, were assigned around 2022 as the test crew for Starliner, which Nasa has long said it needs as a second US ride to space for its astronaut corps. SpaceX's Crew Dragon, in service since 2020, is Nasa's only US option for now.

The ISS, a football field-sized science lab in orbit, has continuously housed international astronaut crews for over 25 years, enabling key space exploration research that shows life in space can affect the human body in multiple ways — from muscle atrophy to possible vision impairment.