Sunita Williams And Butch Wilmore Say They Would Fly On Starliner Capsule Again

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who returned to Earth after a 286-day stay in space, said that they hold themselves partly responsible for what went wrong on the mission and would fly on Boeing’s Starliner again. The veteran astronauts made these remarks during a news conference at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday. It was their first news conference since returning to Earth two weeks ago.

"The spacecraft is really capable. There were a couple things that need to be fixed ... and folks are actively working on that, but it is a great spacecraft, and it has a lot of capability that other spacecraft don't have," said Sunita Williams when asked if they would fly again aboard the Starliner. Meanwhile, Butch Wilmore said that Boeing and NASA share responsibility for what did not work right. “I’ll start and point the finger, and I’ll blame me,” Wilmore said. The US space agency anticipates that the next Starliner mission will launch either in late 2024 or some time in 2025.

Both astronauts also reaffirmed that they never felt neglected or in need of the rescue the president insisted was necessary. “Stuck? OK, we didn’t get to come home the way we planned. But in the big scheme of things, we weren’t stuck. We planned and trained," Wilmore said, as quoted by The Guardian.