The shuttle was explicitly designed not to have remote capability.
Buran, the Russian shuttle, did, but in our design, there are manual levers that must be flipped and several decisions made by a live human in the cockpit. We never redesigned the shuttle so that it could do an unmanned supply run, for instance, saving weight and fuel.
I don’t know what would happen if you flipped the levers, set the switches, and exited as you made the final “land” settings, but I don’t think it would work.
I think that at least one person would have to be on board to land it.
Could the ISS hold five more folks for a couple months?
The procedure is for three to ride it down...Two candidates (CDR and PLT) are obvious, and the third is the jumpseat (MS1)...
Everyone else gets in line for a Russian vehicle, which would be two flights...A russian always drives those busses...
The increment crews would still have their own way to get off the ISS if they had to...
More than likely, they are going to take a good long hard look at this...They got the time, its not like they’ll run out of air...
I’m not sure if they can deploy that inspection boom with the cameras and other instruments to take a look at this while they are docked with the ISS...
We’ll just have to wait and see...