time is ticking for NASA to decide how it's going to get two American astronauts stuck on the International Space Station back to Earth it's been three months since Butch Wilmore and Sunni Williams went to space on Boeing's Starliner but that vehicle is now facing technical problems stopping it from returning to the planet joining us for more is Aaron Bley from ubc's physics and astronomy Department Aaron we appreciate you being here what is it like for these astronauts who went up to space thinking they'd be there for 8 days could be there for months well with Wilmore and Williams are both um veteran and professional astronauts and in the preparation for the mission they went over many different contingencies and possibilities the eight day mission was always the minimum Mission and so they knew that there was the possibility of having it be extended now whether they were thinking about you know going from eight days to eight months that's another matter but um they've already integrated into the uh to the crew on station um they doing work up there maintenance work as well as carrying out science activities and so for the professional astronaut this is part of being an astronaut this uncertainty space is space flight is not a routine task and we're seeing that play out in real time just to clarify with them being up there more people being up there and expected do they have enough food and water and all that uh they do fortunately the ISS is uh continuously resupplied and so there was a recent resupply mission that actually just docked uh with the ISS uh and that brought um Provisions for the astronauts and extra supplies also for Williams and Wilmore some of those supplies that they had to give up on their mission because they took up extra cargo with Starliner now speaking of Starliner what are the main issues with that vehicle that's stopping it from being able to come back to earth ultimately it's about attitude control it's the thrusters um so when they docking with the ISS there was an issue with some of the thrusters not all of them they were able to eventually continue but basically is it it deals with the helium control and they think what happened is that there was some overheating in the system and it causes some expansion uh of materials that ended up blocking some flow they're not sure whether that will happen on the re-entry and that's one of the things that they're trying to figure out attitude control is incredibly important for that re-entry and getting the spacecraft configured in just the right way for safety so they have to make sure that that's done right well so depending on how long it takes Starliner to get fixed if it can get fixed are there other options to get the two astronauts back to Earth well there are um and you know with Starliner it's it's just a matter of understanding whether it's within the mission parameters and Starliner Remains the uh emergency returns so if there were a decompression event for example some a meteorite or piece of space junk punctured the ISS and all the astronauts had returned quickly they would still come back in Starliner at this time um but if they if NASA and Boeing decide that you know what this is not going to happen with Starliner for the return then the idea is to integrate them into crew 9 the Space X vehicle that will launch um some sometime in September depending on how quickly they are able to make the decision and they're going to fly then um and uh empty two seats um and with that carry new space suits so that they'd be able to come back with the the crew n Dragon quite a commute and quite a weight Aaron Bly we appreciate your time and your perspective thanks for joining us thank you for having me