Boeing Starliner spacecraft could wait months to return, but officials say astronauts aren’t stuck

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More than three weeks into a mission that was originally scheduled to last just a few days, the two astronauts piloting the inaugural crewed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft don’t know when they will return home.

Officials have repeatedly indicated that the Starliner — which suffered problems with helium leaks and thruster failures en route to the International Space Station in early June — will be able to safely return astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore home.

Nevertheless, Steve Stich, head of NASA’s commercial crew program, said Friday that the space agency is considering extending the maximum duration of the Starliner mission from 45 days to 90 days. And no firm return date is on the horizon.

Part of this desired extension is driven by ground tests that Boeing and NASA plan to conduct in New Mexico, to try to better understand why some of the Starliner’s thrusters unexpectedly failed during the first stage of its journey. (Four of the Starliner’s five failed thrusters have since been repaired; however, one of them is not expected to operate for the remainder of the mission.)

“We’re just looking at the timeline for when we can do it (the New Mexico test) and then we’re looking at the data,” Stich said at a press briefing Friday. “And that’s where the real difficulty lies, I would say, in determining a landing date.”

“We are in no hurry to go home,” he added.

Stich and Mark Nappi, Boeing’s vice president and director of commercial crew programs, also said Friday that engineers are still unsure of the root cause of the Starliner’s problems.

One goal of the ground tests while the vehicle is still in space, Nappi said, is to try to narrow down possible reasons for the thrusters’ malfunction.

“If the test in New Mexico gives us all the answers, then we can undock and go home,” Nappi said. “If it comes back and says, ‘Here’s 80 percent of the answer. And if you do another hot test in docked mode (on the orbiting Starliner), then you can get 100 percent of the answers,’ then we want the Starliner to be there so we can get that information.”

Meanwhile, Williams and Wilmore have integrated with the rest of the crew currently aboard the International Space Station and are performing routine tasks.

The beginning of a historic flight

The Boeing Starliner’s problems began with its launch atop an Atlas V rocket on June 5.

The mission team detected a helium leak before launch, but did not consider it threatening enough to abort the launch.

Asked Friday about the decision, Nappi said he had “no regrets about the decision to launch and embark on the test flight.”

He added that NASA and Boeing have always emphasized that this mission is a test flight, aimed at collecting data to improve the Starliner’s performance for future missions.

Setbacks in orbit

Several other helium leaks were identified as the craft was en route to the International Space Station, as well as thruster problems. The problems occurred on the Starliner’s service module, a cylindrical attachment at the bottom of the spacecraft that provides much of the vehicle’s power during flight.

By design, the service module will not survive the return trip to Earth. The module is jettisoned and destroyed when the Starliner spacecraft reenters the atmosphere. That’s why the Boeing and NASA teams then chose to leave the Starliner spacecraft safely docked with the space station while they worked to learn as much as they could about these issues.

It is not yet clear whether NASA will extend the maximum mission duration to 90 days. Stich said officials must clear the Starliner’s battery life for this purpose, although he noted that the batteries are recharged at the space station and should perform the same after 90 days as during the first 45 days.

Delays, cost overruns and missed deadlines are common features of the space industry. But Boeing has faced challenges that stand out, especially when the Starliner program is directly compared to its competitor, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.

This spacecraft, which falls under the same NASA Commercial Crew Program for transporting astronauts, made its first test flight in 2020 and has been flying routine missions ever since.

SpaceX had the advantage of designing the Crew Dragon spacecraft based on its Cargo Dragon vehicle, which was used for years to deliver supplies to the International Space Station before its successor took flight.

Boeing, meanwhile, designed the Starliner from scratch.

Overcoming the perception that Boeing has underperformed on the program, however, has been a challenge for the aerospace giant, which is already suffering serious reputational setbacks in its airline division.

“We have had a very good test flight so far, but it is perceived rather negatively,” Nappi said on Friday.

The History of Boeing

Starliner’s journey to this historic crewed test mission began in 2014 when NASA tapped Boeing and SpaceX to develop a spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts to the International Space Station as part of what the federal agency dubbed the Commercial Crew Program.

The vehicle has faced years of delays, roadblocks and additional expenses that have cost the company more than $1 billion, according to public financial filings.

The first Starliner test mission took place without a crew in December 2019. Plagued by numerous missteps, the test flight ended abruptly when the vehicle misfired in orbit. The result was a symptom of software problems, including a coding error that shifted an internal clock by 11 hours.

A second uncrewed flight test in May 2022 revealed additional software issues and problems with some of the vehicle’s thrusters.

Stich said at a June 6 news conference that engineers may not have fully resolved these issues. “We thought we had this problem resolved,” he said.

“I think we’re missing something fundamental that’s happening inside the thruster,” he added.

This is at the heart of the mysteries that Boeing and NASA seek to unravel during the Starliner spacecraft’s extended mission.

Extended stays in space

It is not uncommon for astronauts to unexpectedly extend their stay aboard the space station – for days, weeks, or even months.

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, for example, was scheduled to spend about six months aboard the International Space Station for its maiden voyage to low Earth orbit that began in September 2022. He instead spent a total of 371 days in the space after discovery. of a coolant leak from its original ride – a Russian Soyuz capsule – while docked at the orbiting outpost.

Astronauts also regularly extend their stay on the station for several days at a time due to various factors, including poor weather on Earth or other schedule adjustments.

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