NASA and Boeing officials are pushing back against recent reports that two astronauts who were brought to the ISS by Starliner were stranded on board. The companies said in a news conference Friday that they are using the “luxury of time” to learn as much as possible about the capsule before it returns to Earth.
The two astronauts will remain there for several more weeks while the company and NASA conduct more tests on the ground, meaning their stay will be extended again, but officials did not provide a new target date for their return.
“I want to be clear that we are in no rush to get back home,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said at a news conference. “The station is a nice, safe place to stop and take the time to look at your vehicle and make sure it’s ready to go home.”
Meanwhile, engineers from Boeing and NASA will travel to the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico to conduct a series of remote tests on the spacecraft’s thrusters. Starliner has 28 thrusters, which are responsible for making subtle changes to the spacecraft’s motion in orbit and are essential for safely docking and detaching from the ISS. The docking process was interrupted during approach when five of the thrusters malfunctioned in orbit, but engineers were able to bring four of those thrusters back online and proceed with the docking.
Starliner has suffered several small helium leaks since its June 5 launch, but NASA and Boeing officials have said those leaks are not a problem for its return. Starliner will not leak helium while docking with the ISS. Because it is located in a closed part of the spacecraft. The spacecraft also has 10 times the amount of helium needed to get through undock and deorbit burn, Stich said.
The thruster test is expected to take several weeks, during which NASA spaceflight veterans Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will remain on the station. As of today, they have been aboard the ISS for nearly three weeks. The mission was expected to last about a week. Stich said a landing plan will be determined once the thruster test is complete.
“We just look at the timeline for running those tests, and then we look at the tests (data),” he added. “I would say that’s a really important part of determining the landing date.”
The Starliner was designed for missions of up to 210 days, but this first manned demonstration mission was limited to 45 days due to limitations of the batteries in the capsule's crew module. But since those batteries are being recharged on the space station, Stich said the agency is considering extending the maximum stay.
“The risk over the next 45 days is essentially the same as the risk over the first 45 days,” he said.
Stich and Mark Nappi, Boeing’s commercial crew program manager, said the root cause of the problem is still unknown, but Starliner is safe to return astronauts to Earth in an emergency. The ISS almost had one earlier this week, when a decommissioned Russian Earth observation satellite broke down in orbit. (The cause of the failure is unclear.) NASA officials instructed the crew to take shelter in their respective spacecraft, a standard precaution. The debris did not come close to the ISS, but in the event of a collision, astronauts would have used those spacecraft to get off the station and back to Earth.
