As a result, the Crew 9 mission launched in September with just two astronauts. Wilmore and Williams joined that crew for a full six-month increment on the space station.
Stich said NASA made that decision based on flight schedules to the space station and the orbiting laboratory’s needs. It also allowed time to send SpaceX spacesuits up for the pair of astronauts and to produce seat liners that would make their landing in the water, under parachutes, safe.
“When we laid all that out, the best option was really the one that we’re embarking upon now,” Stich said. “And so we did Crew 9, flying the two empty seats, flying a suit for Butch up, and also making sure that the seats were right for Butch’s anthropometrics, and Suni’s, to return them safely.”
So yes, SpaceX has been working with NASA to present options, including the possibility of a return last fall. However, those discussions were being held within the program levels and their leaders: Stich for Commercial Crew and Dana Weigel for the International Space Station.
“Dana and I worked to come up with a decision that worked for the Commercial Crew Program and Space Station,” Stich said. “And then, Ken (Bowersox), we all, we had the Flight Readiness Review process with you, and the administrator of NASA listened in as well. So we had a recommendation to the agency and that was on the process that we typically use.”
Bowersox confirmed that the decision was made at the programmatic level.
“That’s typically the way our decisions work,” Bowersox said. “The programs work with what makes the most sense for them, programmatically, technically. We’ll weigh in at the headquarters level, and in this case we thought the plan that we came up with made a lot of sense.”
During the teleconference, a vice president at SpaceX, Bill Gerstenmaier, was asked directly what offer Musk was referring to when he mentioned the Biden administration. He did not provide a substantive answer.
Musk claims he made an offer directly to senior officials in the Biden administration. We have no way to verify that, but it does seem clear that the Biden administration never communicated such an offer to lower-level officials within NASA, who made their decision for technical rather than political reasons.
“I think you know we work for NASA, and we worked with NASA cooperatively to do whatever we think was the right thing,” the SpaceX official, Gerstenmaier, replied. “You know, we were willing to support in any manner they thought was the right way to support. They came up with the option you heard described today by them, and we’re supporting that option.”
Did Trump Tell NASA to Accelerate Butch and Suni’s Return?
As of late last year, the Crew 9 mission was due to return in mid-February. However, there was a battery issue with a new Dragon spacecraft that was going to be used to fly Crew 10 into orbit. As a result, NASA announced on December 17 that the return of the crew was delayed into late March or early April.
Then, on February 11, NASA announced that the Crew 10 launch was being brought forward to March 12. This was a couple of weeks earlier than planned, and it was possible because NASA and SpaceX decided to swap out Dragon capsules, using a previously flown vehicle—Crew Dragon Endurance—for Crew 10.
So was this change to accelerate the return of Wilmore and Williams politically driven?
The decision to swap to Endurance was made in late January, Stich said, and this allowed the launch date to be moved forward. Asked if political pressure was a reason, Stich said it was not. “It really was driven by a lot of other factors, and we were looking at this before some of those statements were made by the President and Mr. Musk,” he said.
Bowersox added that this was correct but also said that NASA appreciated the president’s interest in the space program.
“I can verify that Steve has been talking about how we might need to juggle the flights and switch capsules a good month before there was any discussion outside of NASA, but the president’s interest sure added energy to the conversation,” Bowersox said.
This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.
