The two NASA astronauts who flew Boeing’s Starliner capsule to the International Space Station earlier this month have stayed in orbit much longer than anticipated — and will continue to do so, NASA and Boeing say.
The original plan for this first crewed test flight of the Starliner called for veteran astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams to spend about a week on the space station before riding the capsule back to Earth. They arrived at the orbiting outpost June 6.
But their return journey has been postponed several times. NASA initially floated June 18 as the earliest date the astronauts could return, after which the agency said the flight back would happen on June 22. Then that was changed to June 26, and the latest delay, announced Friday, pushed the planned landing back to an as yet undetermined new date.
The reason for the adjustments, NASA has said, is an investigation into issues with the capsule that cropped up earlier in the flight. The spacecraft’s propulsion system has a slow helium leak — something mission managers knew about prior to launch. At the time, they said it was unlikely to affect the test flight or the safety of the astronauts, but four additional helium leaks were detected once the spacecraft reached orbit.
As the Starliner craft neared the space station on June 6, five of its thrusters also malfunctioned, delaying the final approach by just over an hour.
Officials at NASA and Boeing said they are continuing to monitor these issues as they plan for the capsule’s return.
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“We are taking our time and following our standard mission management team process,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, noted in a statement. “We are letting the data drive our decision making relative to managing the small helium system leaks and thruster performance we observed during rendezvous and docking.”
The Starliner’s test flight to the International Space Station is meant to demonstrate that the vehicle can safely ferry astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit and to assess its various systems in space.
The capsule’s launch, too, faced multiple delays before it finally lifted off on June 5 — years behind schedule and way over its initial budget.
NASA officials suggested in a blog post that although no date for the astronauts’ return is set yet, it could come after a planned spacewalk at the International Space Station on July 2.
There are enough supplies at the space station to accommodate the visitors, and there is no need to hurry the departure, the officials said.
Stich said NASA will conduct a full review before the go-ahead is given for the capsule’s undocking.
Wilmore and Williams are currently living on the ISS with seven crew members who were already stationed there: NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Matt Dominick, Tracy Dyson and Jeanette Epps, and Russian cosmonauts Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin and Oleg Kononenko.
During their extended stay in space, Wilmore and Williams are helping out with tasks at the space station and carrying out other tests as part of NASA’s process to certify the Starliner for future missions.
“The crew’s feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and they know that every bit of learning we do on the Crew Flight Test will improve and sharpen our experience for future crews,” Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager of Boeing’s Starliner program, said in a statement.
Boeing hopes to eventually conduct routine flights to and from the space station for NASA, similar to the commercial service that SpaceX has been providing the agency since 2020 with its Crew Dragon capsule.
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