by When you make a purchase through links on our article, Future and its syndicate partners may earn a commission.
Two Boeing Starliner astronauts may find out their fate in the next two weeks – but, for now, NASA still doesn’t know when the duo will be coming home. So while the space agency’s best and brightest work with Boeing engineers to continue evaluating data from ground tests of Starliner systems, the spacecraft’s crew, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, will remain aboard the Station International Space Station (ISS) for now.
Wilmore and Williams launched to the ISS aboard Starliner for the spacecraft’s Crew Flight Test (CFT) on June 5. It was originally planned to complete only about 10 days of its mission, the first crew shakedown cruise of a Boeing commercial crew vehicle, but now. it may be extended by up to eight months, which would put a possible return date in 2025.
Although initially delayed by a small helium leak, the Starliner’s journey to orbit passed without incident. However, as the spacecraft approached the ISS during docking, five of its 28 reaction control thrusters malfunctioned. As a result, NASA and Boeing have extended the Starliner astronauts’ stay aboard the space station indefinitely, while teams on the ground work to better understand what happened. Now, NASA officials say they expect to make a final decision on the crew’s return by the last week of August.
NASA indicated in a previous update that it would be inviting additional propulsion experts to further assess Starliner’s problems, officials confirmed during a call with reporters Wednesday afternoon (August 14).
“We brought in people from the robotic space flight community at Glenn [Research Center] and at the Goddard Space Flight Center, at JPL. They’re used to analyzing propulsion systems when spacecraft are millions of miles away, and they gave us useful input,” Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, said during the briefing.
Emily Nelson, Principal Flight Director of NASA’s Flight Operations Directorate, emphasized during the briefing the importance of “experts with a completely different perspective to come in and look at the data that we’ve pulled together, as we try to to understand what it is. We may not understand.”
As those experts continue to scrutinize the details of the Starliner thruster, NASA has also put together some contingency plans. In the event of an emergency on board the ISS, Wilmore and Williams are currently allowed to use Starliner to evacuate the space station – but after that, NASA is not comfortable enough to give the spacecraft the green light to return to Earth.
The delay of Starliner’s departure from the space station has caused NASA to transfer other upcoming flights to the orbiting laboratory. The launch of SpaceX Crew-9, originally planned for this month, will be launched in late September, and the replacement SpaceX Cargo Dragon flight for NASA has been pushed back to mid-October. To avoid a traffic jam of incoming spacecraft, Starliner must undock from the station before the arrival of Crew-9 – whether it carries a crew or not.
In the case of “or not,” NASA is willing to launch the Crew-9 mission with only two astronauts (or cosmonauts) on board, wrapping Wilmore and Williams at last in Expedition 71 and 72 as official crew members. In this scenario, Starliner would detach from the space station with its cabin empty, perform a deorbit burn and re-entry without Wilmore and Williams on board, and expect a nominal parachute deployment, landing and recovery. The two astronauts would be given new seats aboard the Crew-9 Dragon, and would return to Earth at the end of that mission’s rotation, sometime around February 2025.
RELATED STORIES:
— Thruster glitches and helium leaks can’t stop Boeing’s Starliner astronaut test flight — but why are they happening?
— Starliner: Boeing’s next-generation spaceship for astronauts
— SpaceX Crew-9 astronaut launch delayed until September 24 due to Boeing Starliner problems
“Deciding whether we will have a crew aboard Starliner to return is a fairly big discussion,” Bowersox said during the call Wednesday. “The biggest thing we’re looking at is the drive system.”
“Our main concern is that the deorbit burn will be successful, making sure that the [propellant] the system works exactly as it should, all the way through the deorbit stream,” Bowersox said.
NASA plans to conduct a flight readiness review after completing some key data analysis, which could begin as early as next week. Meanwhile, the Starliner astronauts are patiently awaiting a final decision.
Already aboard the ISS several weeks longer than expected, Wilmore and Williams have lent a hand where they can help with regular station tasks, and they seem to be enjoying their some extra time in orbit, according to NASA’s chief astronaut Joe Acaba.
“Right now, the agency has taken the time to make sure we’re not putting the crew at higher risk than necessary,” Acaba said during Wednesday’s briefing. “As astronauts, there is always something worth waiting for.”
