For the first time since July, a pair of NASA astronauts left behind on the space station are set to join a livestreamed “Earth to space” call to discuss developments about their mission — a week after their ride returned home without them. 

The Friday afternoon call marks only the second time the astronauts have held a news conference since they launched in early June as part of a journey that was expected to last around eight days. Their stay in space was extended after Boeing’s Starliner experienced thruster issues and helium leaks on the way to the space station, leading to fears about the pair’s safety if they were to return.

The Starliner successfully landed in New Mexico without crew around midnight on Saturday, leaving Suni Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore at the space station until February 2025, when a SpaceX capsule is set to bring them home. 

The conference will be a chance for the public to hear directly from the pair following the safe landing of the Starliner. 

The trip would “have been a safe, successful landing with the crew on board, had we had Butch and Suni on board,” NASA’s commercial crew program manager, Steve Stich, said in a post-landing news conference. Asked if he had second thoughts about the decision to bring the Starliner back unmanned, Mr. Stich said it’s “always hard to have that retrospective look, we made the decision to have an uncrewed flight based on what we knew at the time and based on our knowledge of the thruster, and based on the modeling that we had.” 

The decision to leave Mrs. Williams and Mr. Wilmore on the space station as their original ride returned home was a tense and “split” one, as the Sun reported. Boeing had confidence that its spacecraft would be safe for the pair to return in and NASA had safety concerns. Despite the successful landing, Mr. Stich has insisted the extra caution was warranted. 

“I think we made the right decision to not have Butch and Suni on board,” he said after Starliner’s safe landing. “It was a test flight and we didn’t have confidence with the certainty of the thruster performance and that’s really what led us to choose to have the uncrewed test flight.” 

Boeing is planning to “review the data” from the landing “and determine the next steps for the program,” Boeing Commercial Crew Program’s manager, Mark Nappi, said in a statement provided to the Sun. Boeing says it will review the mission data at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 

Friday’s “earth to space” call with Mrs. Williams and Mr. Wilmore comes amid an especially busy season in space, with “profound” changes in the field including international and commercial trips, as space veteran Donald Pettit puts it. 

“I think space is a hopping place right now,” he said in an interview reported by CBS News ahead of his own launch into space. Mr. Pettit arrived at the space station Wednesday with two Russian cosmonauts who are set to be in space for six months. The trio’s arrival means there are currently 12 people at the International Space Station — including Mrs. Williams, Mr. Wilmore, and seven crew members of Expedition 71. 

“It is starting to open up like the Wild West, and I think we are going to see an incredible expansion of humans living and working in an orbital environment,” Mr. Pettit said.

Between the 12 people on the International Space Station, three people on China’s space station, and four private civilians traveling through SpaceX in the “Polaris Dawn” mission, there are a record-high 19 people in orbit. SpaceX said on Thursday that the “Polaris Dawn spacewalk is now complete, marking the first time commercial astronauts have completed a spacewalk from a commercial spacecraft!”

It’s “exciting” that Thursday’s private astronaut spacewalk was successful, the head of Virginia Tech’s aerospace and ocean engineering department, Ella Atkins, tells the Sun, given that “were a lot of risks involved.” 

She agreed with Mr. Pettit’s assessment that outer space is “hopping” and that it’s the new “Wild West.” 

The only caveat is that “although the actual ‘Wild West’ presented a lot of risks, a person with modest financial means could still explore there,” she says. “We need to keep making progress both in space exploration technology and in cost reduction.”