NASA Says It Needs to Decide Soon How Starliner Astronauts Will Come Home

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A week ago, NASA officials said they would most likely need to decide by mid-August on how to safely bring home two astronauts who had traveled to the International Space Station on Boeing’s troubled Starliner spacecraft. But on Wednesday, NASA said a decision remained at least a week away. “We’ve got time available before we bring Starliner home, and we want to use that time wisely,” said Ken Bowersox, the associate administrator for NASA’s space operations mission directorate. But he acknowledged that NASA could not push back a decision indefinitely. “We’re reaching a point where that last week in August, we really should be making a call, if not sooner,” he said. The mission, which launched in June with the NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, was a test flight that carried people to orbit in the Boeing spacecraft for the first time. It was designed to shake out problems before Starliner was to begin regular missions next year to ferry NASA crews to and from the space station.