CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: NASA’s celebrity astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams said Monday that they hold themselves partly responsible for what went wrong on their space sprint-turned-marathon and would fly on Boeing’s Starliner again.
SpaceX recently ferried the duo home after more than nine months at the International Space Station, filling in for Boeing that returned to Earth without them last year.
In their first news conference since coming home, the pair said they were taken aback by all the interest and insisted they were only doing their job and putting the mission ahead of themselves and even their families.
Wilmore didn’t shy from accepting some of the blame for Boeing’s bungled test flight.
“I’ll start and point the finger and I’ll blame me. I could have asked some questions and the answers to those questions could have turned the tide,” he told reporters. “All the way up and down the chain. We all are responsible. We all own this.”
Both astronauts said they would strap into Starliner again. “Because we’re going to rectify all the issues that we encountered. We’re going to fix them. We’re going to make it work,” Wilmore said, adding he’d go back up “in a heartbeat.”
Williams noted that Starliner has “a lot of capability” and she wants to see it succeed. “We’re all in,” she said.
The two will meet with Boeing leadership on Wednesday to provide a rundown on the flight and its problems.
“It’s not for pointing fingers,” Wilmore said. “It’s just to make the path clearer going forward.”
The longtime astronauts and retired Navy captains ended up spending 286 days in space — 278 days more than planned when they blasted off on Boeing’s first astronaut flight on June 5. The test pilots had to intervene in order for the Starliner capsule to reach the space station, as thrusters failed and helium leaked.
Their space station stay kept getting extended as engineers debated how to proceed. NASA finally judged Starliner too dangerous to bring Wilmore and Williams back and transferred them to SpaceX. But the launch of their replacements got stalled, stretching their mission beyond nine months.
President Donald Trump urged SpaceX’s Elon Musk to hurry things up, adding politics to the stuck astronauts’ ordeal. The dragged-out drama finally ended two weeks ago with a flawless splashdown by SpaceX off the Florida Panhandle.
“It’s great being back home after being up there,” Williams told The Associated Press in an interview. She waited until she was steadier on her feet before reuniting with her two Labrador retrievers the day after splashdown. “Pure joy.”
Wilmore already has a to-do list. His wife wants to replace all the shrubs in their yard before summer. “So I’ve got to get my body ready to dig holes,” he told the AP.
NASA said engineers still do not understand why Starliner’s thrusters malfunctioned; more tests are planned through the summer. If engineers can figure out the thruster and leak issues, “Starliner is ready to go,” Wilmore said.
The space agency may require another test flight — with cargo — before allowing astronauts to climb aboard. That redo could come by year’s end.
Despite Starliner’s rocky road, NASA officials said they stand behind the decision made years ago to have two competing US companies providing taxi service to and from the space station. But time is running out: The space station is set to be abandoned in five years and replaced in orbit by privately operated labs.
NASA’s newly returned astronauts say they would fly on Boeing’s Starliner capsule again
https://arab.news/p4zv6
NASA’s newly returned astronauts say they would fly on Boeing’s Starliner capsule again
- President Donald Trump urged SpaceX’s Elon Musk to hurry things up, adding politics to the stuck astronauts’ ordeal
Trump administration labels 3 Muslim Brotherhood branches as terrorist organizations
- The State Department designated the Lebanese branch a foreign terrorist organization
- “These designations reflect the opening actions of an ongoing, sustained effort to thwart Muslim Brotherhood chapters’ violence,” Rubio said
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s administration has made good on its pledge to label three Middle Eastern branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations, imposing sanctions on them and their members in a decision that could have implications for US relationships with allies Qatar and Turkiye.
The Treasury and State departments announced the actions Tuesday against the Lebanese, Jordanian and Egyptian chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood, which they said pose a risk to the United States and American interests.
The State Department designated the Lebanese branch a foreign terrorist organization, the most severe of the labels, which makes it a criminal offense to provide material support to the group. The Jordanian and Egyptian branches were listed by Treasury as specially designated global terrorists for providing support to Hamas.
“These designations reflect the opening actions of an ongoing, sustained effort to thwart Muslim Brotherhood chapters’ violence and destabilization wherever it occurs,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement. “The United States will use all available tools to deprive these Muslim Brotherhood chapters of the resources to engage in or support terrorism.”
Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent were mandated last year under an executive order signed by Trump to determine the most appropriate way to impose sanctions on the groups, which US officials say engage in or support violence and destabilization campaigns that harm the United States and other regions.
Muslim Brotherhood leaders have said they renounce violence.
Trump’s executive order had singled out the chapters in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, noting that a wing of the Lebanese chapter had launched rockets on Israel after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel that set off the war in Gaza. Leaders of the group in Jordan have provided support to Hamas, the order said.
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 but was banned in that country in 2013. Jordan announced a sweeping ban on the Muslim Brotherhood in April.
Nathan Brown, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, said some allies of the US, including the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, would likely be pleased with the designation.
“For other governments where the brotherhood is tolerated, it would be a thorn in bilateral relations,” including in Qatar and Turkiye, he said.
Brown also said a designation on the chapters may have effects on visa and asylum claims for people entering not just the US but also Western European countries and Canada.
“I think this would give immigration officials a stronger basis for suspicion, and it might make courts less likely to question any kind of official action against Brotherhood members who are seeking to stay in this country, seeking political asylum,” he said.
Trump, a Republican, weighed whether to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization in 2019 during his first term in office. Some prominent Trump supporters, including right-wing influencer Laura Loomer, have pushed his administration to take aggressive action against the group.
Two Republican-led state governments — Florida and Texas — designated the group as a terrorist organization this year.
