NASA astronaut from Starliner mission readjusts to Earth, resumes work with Boeing

Record ID: 1987029

  • Title: NASA astronaut from Starliner mission readjusts to Earth, resumes work with Boeing
  • Date: 31st March 2025
  • Summary: HOUSTON, TEXAS, UNITED STATES (MARCH 31, 2025) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) SUNI WILLIAMS, CREW NINE ASTRONAUT, SAYING: "Went to bed, felt good. Laying down on a bed for the first time in nine months was pretty awesome. I just, I crashed until the next day and then just trying to get up and trying to move around and understand gravity. Went through a bunch of tests and
  • Embargoed:
  • Keywords: CREW NINE NASA SPACE MISSION SUNI SUNI WILLIAMS
  • Location: HOUSTON, TEXAS, UNITED STATES
  • City: HOUSTON, TEXAS, UNITED STATES
  • Country: US
  • Topics: North America,Science,Space Exploration
  • Reuters ID: LVA001313631032025RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: 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.
    "Laying down on a bed for the first time in nine months was pretty awesome. I just crashed until the next day and then just trying to get up and trying to move around and understand gravity," said Williams said in an interview in Houston on Monday (March 31).
    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 (April 2).
    "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 program 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 U.S. Navy test pilots, were assigned around 2022 as the test crew for Starliner, which NASA has long said it needs as a second U.S. ride to space for its astronaut corps. SpaceX's Crew Dragon, in service since 2020, is NASA's only U.S. 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.
    (Production: Liliana Salgado)
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