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Starliner astronauts say no regrets, agree with NASA decision to extend their mission
The two Starliner astronauts said Friday they had no regrets about NASA’s decision to extend their mission and to bring their spacecraft back to Earth without them, saying they had turned the page and were enjoying the transition to full-time space station astronauts.
Starliner commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams, both former Navy test pilots and veterans of earlier stays aboard the International Space Station, spoke with reporters from orbit Friday, the 100th day of a mission originally expected to last a little more than a week.
NASA TV
“There’s one thing that I try not to fret over, things that I can’t control,” Wilmore said, floating beside Williams in the station’s Destiny lab module. “I’m not going to fret over it. There’s no benefit to it at all.
“So my transition (psychologically), maybe it wasn’t instantaneous, but it was pretty close. If I can’t affect it, if there’s nothing we can do, there’s nothing we can do. So we march forward, carry out the plan of the day.”
Williams agreed, saying “that’s what we do. We’re professionals.”
“I have to say, though, in the back of my mind, you know, there’s folks on the ground who had some plans, right? Like my family, to spend some time with my mom, and I think I was fretting more about that, the things that we had sort of all talked about for this fall and this winter,” Williams said.
“But you know what? everybody is on board and is supporting us while we’re up here. So I think that fret went away real quick. We’re here, and we’re going to be the best crewmates that we can be for our for our (space station) crewmates up here.”
Wilmore and Williams were launched to the station June 5, kicking off the Starliner’s first piloted test flight.
During rendezvous with the lab the next day, five reaction control system thrusters failed to operate properly and four helium leaks in the propulsion pressurization system were detected in addition to a small leak that was spotted before launch.
NASA and Boeing engineers and managers spent the next three months analyzing the problems to determine if the Starliner could safely bring Wilmore and Williams back to Earth. Boeing argued the test data showed it could, but NASA managers were not convinced.
In the end, agency managers opted to keep the two astronauts aboard the station for an extended stay and to bring the Starliner down, without its crew, on Sept. 7. The ship’s re-entry and landing went off without a hitch, vindicating Boeing’s faith in the spacecraft.
Wilmore and Williams both said the entire station crew got up early to watch the Starliner’s return to Earth and Wilmore said he was thrilled at the successful landing. But he did not question NASA’s decision.
NASA TV
“It was wonderful that it made it back, and the fact that we weren’t on it didn’t even come into mind at all,” Wilmore said. “It was never like, oh, we shouldn’t… no, not at all. The decision was made (and) we go forward with the plan of the day.”
But he said if NASA had had more time to investigate the helium leaks and thruster problems, he and Williams might have been able to return aboard the Starliner as originally planned.
“I think the data could have gotten (us) there,” he said. “We could have gotten to the point, I believe, where we could have returned on Starliner.”
But because of other spacecraft and crews flying to and from the space station this month, “we just did not have enough time to get to the end of the timeline where we could say that we were going to come back with it. I think we’d have gotten there, but we just ran out of time.”
Wilmore and Williams are not the first astronauts who have had to face an extended mission.
NASA astronaut Frank Rubio faced a similar dilemma in 2022 when his six-month stay aboard the station was extended to more than a full year because of problems with the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that carried him to orbit.
“I think going from six months to 12 months is tough, but it’s not as tough as going from eight days to eight months,” Rubio said in an interview with CBS News.
“Certainly, there’s a little part of you that’s disappointed,” he said. “It’s okay to acknowledge that. But you also can’t mope around for the entire time, right? … You just have to kind of dedicate and rededicate yourself to the mission.”
And that’s exactly what Wilmore and Williams said they were doing.
The Starliner astronauts have joined the station’s full-time crew and will now come home in late February, hitching a ride back aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft with Crew 9 commander Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov. The Crew 9 flight is scheduled for launch Sept. 25.
The Crew Dragon normally launches with four station fliers aboard, but NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson were bumped from the upcoming flight to provide return seats for Wilmore and Williams. When they return to Earth in late February with Hague and Gorbunov, the Starliner astronauts will have logged 262 days off planet.
“We’re both Navy, we’ve both been on deployments,” Williams said. “We’re not surprised when deployments get changed. Our families are used to that as well. So that’s not a humongous surprise.”
In this case, NASA “made the right decisions, and we’re here. That’s how things go in this business. It’s risky, and that’s how it goes in the business.”
On a more positive note, she added, she and Wilmore are “excited to fly in two different spacecraft.”
“We’re testers, that’s what we do, we look at different aircraft, spacecraft, whatever. … We wanted to take Starliner to the completion and land it back on land at home. But you have to turn the page and look at the next opportunity. We’ll come back with some evaluations of both spacecraft, and I think we’re pretty fortunate for that.”
And in the meantime, it’s not all work and no play. Williams, who logged 322 days aboard the space station on two earlier visits, said living aboard the orbital lab “is my happy place.”
“It’s very it’s very peaceful up here,” she said. “A lot of times there’s a lot of work that’s going on, but it also gives you a time to be a little introspective, a little change (in) your perspective on how we do things on Earth.
“It really is difficult for me to imagine people on Earth not getting along together. It’s the one planet we have, and we should all really be happy that we’re there together, because that’s it. That’s our place. … It just changes your perspective.”
And then, there are sports. Wilmore, raised in Mt. Juliet, Tenn., just outside Nashville, is an ardent Southeastern Conference football fan. He told an ESPN reporter “if you’re looking for a guest picker for ‘College Game Day,’ give me a call. Also, I’ve been asked several times, yes, I do have the SEC Network.”
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After Tyre Nichols’ fatal beating, Memphis officer texted photo of bloodied man to ex-girlfriend, she testifies
A former Memphis police officer charged in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols sent his ex-girlfriend a photo of the badly injured man on the night he was punched, kicked and hit with a police baton following a traffic stop, according to trial testimony Wednesday.
Brittany Leake, a Memphis officer and Demetrius Haley’s former girlfriend, testified during the criminal trial that she was on the phone with Haley when officers pulled Nichols over for a traffic stop. She said she heard a “commotion,” including verbal orders for someone to give officers his hands.
The call ended, but Haley later texted the photo in a group chat comprising Haley, Leake and her godsister, she testified. Prosecutors displayed the photo for the jury. It showed Nichols with his eyes closed, on the ground with what appeared to be blood near his mouth and his hands behind his back.
Leake said that when she saw the photo, her reaction was: “Oh my God, he definitely needs to go to the Med.”
The Med is shorthand for Memphis’ trauma hospital.
The fatal beating, caught on police bodycams and street surveillance cameras, has sparked protests and calls for police reform. Officers said they pulled over Nichols for reckless driving, but Memphis’ police chief said there was no evidence to substantiate that claim.
Haley, Tadarrius Bean and Justin Smith are on trial after pleading not guilty to charges that they deprived Nichols of his civil rights through excessive force and failure to intervene, and obstructed justice through witness tampering. Their trial began Sept. 9 and is expected to run three to four weeks.
George Walker IV / AP
The Memphis Police Department fired the three men, along with Emmitt Martin III and Desmond Mills Jr., after Nichols’ death. The beating was caught on police video, which was released publicly. The officers were later indicted on the federal charges. Martin and Mills have taken plea deals.
During her testimony Wednesday, Leake said she deleted the photo after she saw it and that sending such a photo is against police policy.
“I wasn’t offended, but it was difficult to look at,” she said.
Leake said Haley had sent her photos before of drugs, and of a person who had been injured in a car accident.
Earlier Wednesday, Martin was on the witness stand for a third day. Defense attorneys tried to show inconsistencies between Martin’s statements to investigators and his court testimony. Martin acknowledged lying about what happened to Memphis Police Department internal investigators, to try to cover up and “justify what I did.”
But Martin said he told the truth to FBI investigators after he pleaded guilty in August, including statements about feeling pressure on his duty belt where his gun was located during the traffic stop, but not being able to see if Nichols was trying to get his gun. Martin has testified that he said “let go of my gun” during the traffic stop.
Martin Zummach, the attorney for Justin Smith, asked Martin if he knew of any reasons why Nichols did not simply say, “I give up.”
“He’s out of it,” Martin said. “Disoriented.”
Martin testified that the situation escalated quickly when Haley pulled his gun and violently yanked Nichols from his car, using expletives and failing to tell Nichols why he had been pulled over and removed from the vehicle.
“He never got a chance to comply,” Martin said.
Nichols, who was Black, was pepper sprayed and hit with a stun gun during the traffic stop, but ran away, police video shows. The five officers, who also are Black, then beat him about a block from his home, as he called out for his mother.
Video shows the officers milling about and talking as Nichols struggled with his injuries. Nichols died Jan. 10, 2023, three days after the beating.
An autopsy report shows Nichols – the father of a boy who is now 7 – died from blows to the head. The report describes brain injuries, and cuts and bruises on his head and elsewhere on his body.
Jesse Guy testified that he was working as a paramedic for the Memphis Fire Department the night of the beating. He arrived at the location after two emergency medical technicians, Robert Long and JaMichael Sandridge.
Guy said he was not told about the medical problems Nichols had experienced before he arrived, and that Nichols was injured, seated on the ground and unresponsive.
Nichols had no pulse and was not breathing, and it “felt like he was lifeless,” Guy said.
In the ambulance, Guy performed CPR and provided mechanical ventilation, and Nichols had a pulse by the time he arrived at the hospital, the paramedic said.
Guy said Long and Sandridge did not say if they had checked Nichols’ pulse and heart rate, and they did not report if they had given him oxygen. When asked by one of Bean’s lawyers whether that information would have been helpful in treating Nichols, Guy said yes.
Long and Sandridge were fired for violating fire department policies after Nichols died. They have not been criminally charged.
The five officers also have been charged with second-degree murder in state court, where they pleaded not guilty. Mills and Martin are expected to change their pleas.
Federal prosecutors have previously recommended a 40-year sentence for Martin. A date has not been set in state court yet.
Nichols worked for FedEx, and he enjoyed skateboarding and photography. The city of Sacramento, where Nichols grew up, named a skatepark in his honor. “Tyre fell in love with skateboarding at a young age and it wasn’t long before it became a part of his lifestyle,” states the resolution approved by the city council. He had a tattoo of his mother’s name.
“Tyre Nichols’ family have been praying for justice and accountability from the very beginning of this tragedy,” Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, the civil rights attorneys representing Nichols’ family, said in a statement when the trial began.
Boeing’s CEO said Wednesday that the company will begin furloughing “a large number” of employees to conserve cash during the strike by union machinists that began last week.
Chief Executive Kelly Ortberg said the people who would be required to take time off without pay starting in coming days include executives, managers and other employees based in the U.S.
“While this is a tough decision that impacts everybody, it is in an effort to preserve our long-term future and help us navigate through this very difficult time,” Ortberg said in a company-wide message to staff.
Boeing didn’t say how many people will face rolling furloughs, but the number is expected to run into the tens of thousands. The aerospace giant had 171,000 employees at the start of the year.
About 33,000 Boeing factory workers in the Pacific Northwest began a strike Friday after rejecting a proposal to raise pay by 25% over four years. They want raises of at least 40%, the return of a traditional pension plan and other improvements in the contract offer they voted down.
Scott Brauer / Bloomberg via Getty Images
The strike is halting production of several airplane models including Boeing’s best-selling plane, the 737 Max. The company gets more than half of the purchase price when new planes are delivered to buyers, so the strike will quickly hurt Boeing’s cash flow.
Ortberg said selected employees will be furloughed for one week every four weeks while retaining their benefits. The CEO and other senior executives will take pay cuts during the duration of the strike, he said, without stating how deep the cuts will be.
All work related to safety, quality, customer support and certification of new planes will continue during the furloughs, he said, including production of 787 Dreamliner jets, which are built by nonunion workers in South Carolina.
Ortberg said in a memo to employees that the company is talking to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers about a new contract agreement that could be ratified.
“However, with production paused across many key programs in the Pacific Northwest, our business faces substantial challenges and it is important that we take difficult steps to preserve cash and ensure that Boeing is able to successfully recover,” he said.
Boeing’s chief financial officer warned employees earlier this week that temporary layoffs were possible.
The company, which is based in Arlington, Virginia, but has most of its commercial-airplanes business located in the Pacific Northwest, is also cutting spending on suppliers, freezing hiring and eliminating most travel.
Despite two full days of talks assisted by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the union said Wednesday that no resolution had been reached and no additional negotiations were scheduled, according to CBS Seattle affiliate KIRO-TV.
Striking workers are picketing at several locations in the Seattle area, Oregon and California. The union, which recommended the offer that members later rejected by a 96% vote, is surveying the workers to learn what they want in a new contract. The union’s last strike at Boeing, in 2008, lasted about two months.
If the walkout doesn’t end soon, Boeing’s credit rating could be downgraded to non-investment or junk status, which would make borrowing more expensive. Shortly after the walkout began Friday, Moody’s put Boeing on review for a possible downgrade, and Fitch said a strike longer than two weeks would make a downgrade more likely.
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