The White House has not made a final decision yet on the large rocket.
The primary contractor for the Space Launch System rocket, Boeing, is preparing for the possibility that NASA cancels the long-running program.
On Friday, with less than an hour's notice, David Dutcher, Boeing's vice president and program manager for the SLS rocket, scheduled an all-hands meeting for the approximately 800 employees working on the program. The apparently scripted meeting lasted just six minutes, and Dutcher didn't take questions.
During his remarks, Dutcher said Boeing's contracts for the rocket could end in March and that the company was preparing for layoffs in case the contracts with the space agency were not renewed. "Cold and scripted" is how one person described Dutcher's demeanor.
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NASA will send astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams home from the International Space Station early on a previously used SpaceX Dragon
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NASA announced Tuesday (Feb. 11) that the two astronauts, who hitched a ride to the International Space Station (ISS) on a Boeing Starliner spacecraft last June, will head home on a SpaceX Dragon capsule that will leave Earth with the ISS Crew-10 on Wednesday, March 12. After a few days' handover period, Williams and Wilmore will leave the ISS with the rest of the Crew-9 mission, after having spent about 250 consecutive days in orbit.
Williams and Wilmore were initially meant to spend about a week in space, but problems with the propulsion and helium systems on their Boeing Starliner led NASA to return the capsule to Earth empty after three months of troubleshooting couldn't resolve the issues. The capsule ended up landing safely in New Mexico on Sept. 7, 2024. However, a watchdog report just released by the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel found that new thruster problems did appear during the descent. In October, The Wall Street Journal reported that Boeing is in the early stages of considering a sale of its space business, including Starliner.
