The investigation into what caused two astronauts to be stranded at the International Space Station will not include the specific system that caused the problem, former astronaut and retired Navy Capt. Winston Scott told Newsmax on Wednesday.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been stuck at the space station since the beginning of June. A cascade of vexing thruster failures and helium leaks in Boeing's new Starliner capsule marred their trip, and they ended up in a holding pattern as engineers conducted tests and debated what to do about the trip back.
NASA on Saturday announced Wilmore and Williams will return in a SpaceX spacecraft in February. Their empty Starliner capsule will undock in a week or two and attempt to return on autopilot.
"They will undock the Starliner with no crew on it. Return to Earth. Now, what will probably happen is the capsule itself will likely be returned. But the part of the system that is the culprit, the service module, will not make it back," Scott told "Wake Up America" co-host Sharla McBride.
"The service module is designed to be jettisoned prior to orbit or to entry. It will burn up in the atmosphere. So, the part that they really want to examine will not come back to Earth. They'll probably get the capsule back, no service module. So, the game begins again is to how to address the issues? How do we really get down to the root cause of the problem? Where do we go forward?"
Scott said he agreed with the decision to wait until February to bring back the astronauts.
"I think both NASA and Boeing made the right call to bring the astronauts home on the Space X vehicle," Scott said. "There's simply too many unknowns about Starliner to risk the lives of these two astronauts, bringing them home on that vehicle."
As a man who has been in space for more than 24 days, Scott was asked how Wilmore and Williams will cope with being stranded.
"It is a very stressful situation for them because as you said, they are pilots. Their job is to do a test flight, fly the vehicle up to the station, stay there for about eight days and then fly the vehicle home. And then it turns out that they're going to be there for 8 or 9 months now. So it's very, very stressful for them," he said.
"However, they are troopers, you know, they're both naval aviators. They've deployed on board Navy ships for six months, seven months, eight months at a time. So they understand long deployments, long family separations. And even though they weren't prepared for this, they're actually going to turn to and do the best they can.
"I suspect that they could come home tomorrow. They would do so. Difficult situation, but they will handle it."
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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