NASA announced today that NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will be the two Crew-9 members who get to remain on the September mission to the International Space Station. NASA is reducing the crew size because two of the seats are needed to return the NASA astronauts who flew to the ISS on Boeing’s Starliner Crew Flight Test.  Zena Cardman, who had been assigned as Commander, and Stephanie Wilson, a mission specialist, will have to wait for another assignment.

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NASA decided today that the Boeing Starliner Crew Flight Test mission will return to Earth on September 6.  The spacecraft will be empty when it lands in New Mexico instead of bringing back the two NASA astronauts who were aboard when it launched. Worries that the thrusters may not perform as planned led the agency to decide to leave the astronauts aboard the International Space Station until they can return on an alternative spacecraft, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, in February.

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The FAA is requiring SpaceX to suspend flights of the Falcon 9 rocket until an investigation into this morning’s landing failure is complete. Whether that takes hours, days or weeks remains to be seen, but until then Falcon 9 launches including Polaris Dawn will have to wait.

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SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission with four private astronauts just scrubbed again, the third night in a row.  This time the problem is weather, but not the usual delay because of storms at the time of launch, but the forecast for the end of the mission.

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NASA’s Office of Inspector General is again expressing deep concern about NASA’s management of Mobile Launcher-2, an enormous structure needed to haul Space Launch System rockets to the launch pad for the Artemis program. A report two years ago blamed both the prime contractor, Bechtel, and NASA for poor management. NASA itself now estimates the cost will be more than three times what was planned with delivery over four years late, but the OIG thinks it will be a lot more money and even later.

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An independent review of the January failure of Astrobotic’s Peregrine-1 lunar lander has confirmed that a single bad valve doomed the mission. While designated a risk before launch because of problems with its twin, the company concluded it would be even more risky to tear the lander apart and replace it. The outside reviewers agreed and simply chalked the failure up to a hardware failure, not to the lander’s design or lapse in company decision-making. Changes are being made so the valves are more robust.

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Japan’s space agency has ended attempts to reestablish communications with the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon or SLIM. Despite landing upside down in January, SLIM operated much longer than expected on the lunar surface. The final contact was on April 28.

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Here are links to all the articles published on SpacePolicyOnline.com from August 12-25, 2024 including our “What’s Happening in Space Policy” for this coming week. Click on each title to read the entire article.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of August 25-31, 2024 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess until September 9 except for pro forma sessions.

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NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced today that the agency has decided to return Boeing’s Starliner capsule to Earth empty. The two NASA astronauts who flew it up to the International Space Station will remain there until February and return on the next scheduled flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. After talking with Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, Nelson remains confident Boeing will fix the problems and Starliner will fly again with a crew.

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