A Brief History of Astronauts Stuck in Space

NASA’s Boeing Starliner crew is far from the first to require a Plan B to return from orbit.

Ben Evans

Monday, September 09, 2024 at 02:41 PM ET

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Edited By: tccjeremy

Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule will return from its test flight without a crew. [Credit: NASA]

Key Takeaways:

The Boeing Starliner mission for astronauts Wilmore and Williams was unexpectedly extended from 8 days to 8 months due to critical helium leaks and thruster failures, necessitating their return on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
This extension marks the largest duration hike in crewed spaceflight history, with the astronauts set to be the first to launch and land on four different spacecraft types.
While returning on a different spacecraft (ride-swapping) is a common, often planned, practice in spaceflight, unexpected mission lengthenings are rarer.
Historically, missions have been prolonged by unforeseen circumstances, including the 2003 Columbia disaster, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and various technical issues on the ISS, sometimes forcing crews to stay in space for significantly longer periods.

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When NASA announced August 24 that Boeing Starliner astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Suni Williams will remain in space another six months, miss Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s holidays with their families, and land in a different spacecraft, it stirred headlines worldwide.

But theirs is not the first mission to be unexpectedly lengthened or hit by unforeseen circumstances.