The debut crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner space capsule, launched in early June and originally planned to last about a week, will now stretch to next February as NASA decided over the weekend that sending veteran astronauts and test pilots Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore back to Earth on the problem-plagued spacecraft is too risky.
Previous reports from NASA and Boeing detailed that five of 28 maneuvering thrusters failed to perform as expected during Starliner’s docking at the International Space Station on June 6. Engineers also identified five small helium leaks, some of which were detected before the spacecraft launched. Helium is used in the capsule’s thruster firing procedure. Since then, engineering teams have been scrambling to identify the underlying issues with the thrusters, critical for maneuvering and positioning the spacecraft, including reviewing massive amounts of data, conducting flight and ground testing, hosting independent reviews with agency propulsion experts and developing various return contingency plans, NASA said.
But ultimately NASA decided that ongoing uncertainty and a lack of concurrence among engineers and other experts “does not meet the agency’s safety and performance requirements for human spaceflight, thus prompting NASA leadership to move the astronauts to the (SpaceX Dragon) Crew-9 mission.”
“Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and most routine,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a Saturday press release. “A test flight, by nature, is neither safe, nor routine. The decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring Boeing’s Starliner home uncrewed is the result of our commitment to safety: our core value and our North Star. I’m grateful to both the NASA and Boeing teams for all their incredible and detailed work.”
When will Starliner spacecraft return?
Boeing’s Starliner capsule is designed for autonomous flight and has previously completed two uncrewed test flights. On Saturday, NASA said it was working with Boeing engineers to update Starliner’s systems for the autonomous return flight. The ship needs to vacate its dock at the ISS before late September when the SpaceX Dragon Crew-9 flight is scheduled to arrive.
“Starliner is a very capable spacecraft and, ultimately, this comes down to needing a higher level of certainty to perform a crewed return,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, in Saturday’s announcement. “The NASA and Boeing teams have completed a tremendous amount of testing and analysis, and this flight test is providing critical information on Starliner’s performance in space. Our efforts will help prepare for the uncrewed return and will greatly benefit future corrective actions for the spacecraft.”
Earlier this month, and in anticipation of Saturday’s decision, NASA announced the SpaceX Crew 9 mission to the International Space Station, originally scheduled to launch Aug. 18, had been pushed back more than a month to potentially reconfigure that flight to make room for passengers when it returns next winter. Those changes include trimming Crew 9′s original four-astronaut crew to just two to make room for the stranded Starliner crew. The flight will also carry necessary equipment to the ISS, like new spacesuits, for Williams and Wilmore to join the Dragon crew.
How these decisions, and mission outcomes, impact Boeing’s Starliner program and the spacecraft’s future viability as a reliable vehicle remains to be seen.
How SpaceX and Boeing got here and there
Back in 2014, NASA announced a pair of “groundbreaking” contracts, granted to Boeing and SpaceX, aiming to bring the job of ferrying astronauts to and from the orbiting ISS, a task that was assumed by Russia’s Roscosmos following the retirement of the Space Shuttle program in 2011, back to the U.S.
Boeing’s long partnership with NASA and jumbo $4.2 billion initial contract, compared to SpaceX’s $2.6 billion, led many to believe early on that the legacy aircraft and aerospace company would outpace Elon Musk’s scrappy space startup and be first to the finish line in NASA’s new Commercial Crew Transportation Capability effort.
But a series of delays allowed SpaceX to leapfrog Boeing in the work to develop a new crew transport vehicle and in 2020, SpaceX’s Dragon 2 Crew Capsule became the first U.S.-launched spaceflight to carry astronauts to the ISS since the final, 13-day shuttle mission performed by Atlantis. To date, the Dragon spacecraft has made over 20 trips to the orbiting laboratory, according to SpaceX.
In May, NASA’s Nelson said the Starliner test flight is a crucial step in the agency’s ongoing efforts to commercialize the business of space exploration, including the effort to replace the job of ferrying astronauts to the ISS following the retirement of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.