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SpaceX will bring Boeing's Starliner astronauts home from the International Space Station
SpaceX will bring home the two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station for the past two months due to troubles with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, NASA announced Saturday.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the decision, which followed a formal review conducted Saturday, was driven by the agency’s commitment to safety, especially following the loss of 14 astronauts in the 1986 Challenger explosion and the 2003 Columbia disaster on its return to earth.
“This whole discussion, remember, is put in the context of we have had mistakes done in the past,” Nelson said at a news conference at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. “Space flight is risky, even at its safest and even at its most routine. And a test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine.”
The decision by NASA to bring home astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule in February follows months of irregularities that have hobbled the third test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft — which began even before its June 5 launch.
The outcome is not only a blow to Boeing, whose Starliner program is years behind schedule, but to NASA, which awarded multibillion-dollar contracts to the company and rival SpaceX in 2014 to service the space agency with crews and cargo.
Since 2020, Elon Musk’s Hawthorne-based company has ferried more than half a dozen crews there aboard its Crew Dragon capsule — while Boeing has managed only two remote flights prior to this one, including one in May 2022 that docked with the orbiting lab.
NASA said Saturday that the Starliner will now return to earth remotely next month. The SpaceX mission that will bring Wilmore and Williams home is scheduled to blast off Sept. 24.
Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s chief operating officer, responded to the announcement with a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “SpaceX stands ready to support @NASA however we can,” she said.
Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said the decision resulted from inconclusive ground tests that were conducted on the thrusters after they malfunctioned when Starliner docked with the space station on June 6.
“As we got more and more data over the summer, and understood the uncertainty of that data, it became very clear to us that the best course of action was to return Starliner uncrewed,” he said. “If we had a model, if we had a way to accurately predict what the thrusters would do …. I think we would have taken a different course of action.”
The problems that have plagued Starliner have been an embarrassment for Boeing, which is still grappling with an investigation into a door plug that blew out during a 737 Max 9 flight this year to Ontario International Airport in San Bernardino County. That followed the two crashes of its 737 Max 8 jets several years ago that severely damaged its reputation for safety.
Just this month, Boeing wrote off $125 million in expenses related to the Starliner program after previously booking some $1.5 billion in cost overruns.
Nelson said Saturday he informed Boeing’s new chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, of the decision, and that the executive committed to working with the agency to resolve the problems with Starliner. Nelson said that will give the agency the “redundancy” it has wanted to service the station.
In a statement Saturday, Boeing said, “We continue to focus, first and foremost, on the safety of the crew and spacecraft. We are executing the mission as determined by NASA, and we are preparing the spacecraft for a safe and successful uncrewed return.”
For years, NASA had to rely solely on Russia’s Soyuz craft to send U.S. astronauts to the station after the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011. NASA plans to continue to partner with the Russian program, which along with the U.S. was the primary constructor of the orbiting lab that first launched in 1998.
The latest Starliner mission, which was expected to last about a week, was plagued with troubles.
The capsule was originally set to blast off May 6, but that flight was scuttled because of a malfunctioning valve on the Atlas V rocket that launches it into space. Additional launch dates were missed after a helium leak was found in the propulsion system that propels Starliner in space.
The helium pressurizes the system’s rocket fuel but NASA and Boeing officials decided the leak was not serious and developed software fixes to work around it. However, the leak grew larger as the spacecraft approached and docked with the space station the next day.
More concerning was that the propulsion system’s thruster engines malfunctioned during the docking procedure.
Ground testing on an identical thruster NASA conducted last month found that Teflon used to control the flow of rocket propellant eroded under high heat conditions, while different seals that control the helium gas showed bulging.
NASA officials have maintained Starliner has 10 times more helium than it needs to return to earth and the craft could be used if there were an emergency situation aboard the space station. This month Boeing issued a statement that cited all the testing that had been conducted and concluded, “Boeing remains confident in the Starliner spacecraft and its ability to return safely with crew.”
The aging space station is scheduled to be retired in 2030. In June, NASA awarded SpaceX an $843-million contract to build a craft that would nudge the station safely out of its orbit so it can burn up in the atmosphere, with any stray pieces landing in remote areas of the ocean.
The troubles afflicting Starliner mean that if it ever receives agency clearance to send working crews to the space station, it will provide that service for far fewer years. Boeing, however, has said it wants to use the craft to service the commercial space station being developed by Jeff Bezo’s Blue Origin rocket company.
Unlike the Space X’s Crew Dragon capsule, which lands in water, Starliner will touch down in the Arizona or New Mexico desert in a parachute ground landing pioneered by the Soviets decades ago. That makes it easier to ready the reusable craft for another launch.
However, the propulsion system is jettisoned in space, so NASA and Boeing engineers will not have a chance to take it apart and examine exactly what went wrong.
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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