NASA has not yet decided whether to keep two astronauts on the space station until next year.

NASA said Wednesday it has not yet decided whether to keep two astronauts aboard the International Space Station until early next year and return their troubled Boeing capsule empty.

Instead of flying Boeing’s Starliner back to Earth, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams could board SpaceX’s next flight. That option would keep them aboard the space station until next February.

Test pilots had planned to be away for only about a week when they launched with the first Starliner crew. But thruster failures and helium leaks marred the capsule’s journey to the space station, casting doubt on its ability to return safely and leaving the astronauts in limbo.

NASA officials said they are analyzing more data before making a decision by late next week or early next week. Those thrusters are critical to keeping the capsule in the right position as it descends from orbit.

“We have some time before we bring Starliner home, and we want to use that time wisely,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s spacecraft operations mission manager.

NASA safety chief Russ DeLoach added: “We don’t have enough knowledge and data to do any kind of simple, precise calculation.”

DeLoach said the space agency wants to make room for all opinions, unlike what happened during NASA’s two shuttle tragedies, Challenger and Columbia, when dissenting views were ignored.

“That can mean that sometimes we don’t move very quickly because we’re publishing everything, and I think you can kind of see that at work here,” he said.

The move to SpaceX would require replacing two of the four astronauts assigned to the next ferry flight, currently scheduled for late September. Wilmore and Williams would fill the empty seats on SpaceX’s Dragon capsule once that six-month mission is complete.

Another complication: The space station has only two parking spots for American capsules. Boeing’s capsule would have to leave before SpaceX’s Dragon arrives to free up a spot.

Boeing maintains that Starliner could still bring astronauts home safely. The company released a list of tests it has conducted on the boosters in space and on the ground since liftoff earlier this month.

NASA would like to keep the current SpaceX crew on Earth until replacements arrive, barring emergencies. The four were supposed to return to Earth this month, but their mission was extended for a seventh month due to uncertainty surrounding Starliner, forcing them to stay on Earth until the end of September. Most space station stays last six months, though some have lasted a full year.

Wilmore and Williams are retired Navy captains who spent months aboard the space station years ago. They got to work as soon as they arrived, helping with experiments and repairs.

“They’ll do what we ask them to do. That’s their job as astronauts,” NASA Chief Astronaut Joe Acaba said.

He added: “This mission is a test flight and as Butch and Suni expressed before launch, they knew this mission might not be perfect.”

Wanting competing services and backup options, NASA hired SpaceX and Boeing to ferry astronauts to and from the space station after the shuttles retired in 2011.

SpaceX’s first astronaut flight took place in 2020. Boeing ran into so many problems during its first uncrewed test flight in 2019 that it had to start over. More problems then arose, costing the company more than $1 billion to fix before finally flying astronauts.

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