NASA's new plan revealed after astronauts were left stranded in space for nine months
The two NASA astronauts who were on the International Space Station for nine months instead of eight days have since been safely returned to Earth.
However, the future of the equipment which suffered issues and meant they were up in space for much longer than anticipated is still on the table.
Last year Barry 'Butch' Wilmore and Sunita 'Suni' Williams blasted off into space for what they thought would be an eight-day mission that turned into a much longer stay.
Their journey up to the ISS was the first crewed flight of the Boeing Starliner capsule, but the spacecraft suffered helium leaks and thruster failures which meant it was decided the astronauts wouldn't be returning on schedule.
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Eventually it was decided that Starliner would return to Earth without a crew, and that Wilmore and Williams would stay on the ISS to keep a full complement of crew there.
Had the astronauts been desperate to return home, former Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield said they could have been brought back, so they were never really stranded.
They have since made it back to Earth on a SpaceX capsule, and have begun a lengthy rehabilitation process as they get used to being in gravity once more.
As for the spacecraft that took them up there in the first place, Space.com reports that NASA has a new plan for what to do with it.
While Starliner may have had some problems on its first manned spaceflight, it seems as though NASA is hoping to find a way to make it work in the future.
Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said during a press conference this week (18 March) that they were 'certainly looking at Starliner very carefully'.
"We're in the process of looking at that vehicle, looking at the helium system," he added.
"We've got some candidate seals that we're going to replace. We'll get into some testing here over the summer timeframe with what we call an 'integrated doghouse' at White Sands."
Despite it not really working out the first time it was used, Stich said there were 'some changes we need to make to the way we heat those thrusters, the way we fire those thrusters' and once that was done they could send it on a test flight.
He said that the astronauts returning in SpaceX's Dragon capsule showed him 'how important it is to have two different crew transportation systems' so there was a 'redundancy' in case something went wrong.
It would be better than placing all of the eggs into one basket, but Starliner needs to show the first failure was just an early hiccup that can be fixed.
Topics: NASA, Space, Technology
Joe Harker