(Bloomberg) — Boeing Co. and NASA have delayed the return home of two astronauts from the International Space Station by four days, the latest disruption to a program beset by delays.
The mission, using Boeing's CST-100 Starliner capsule, will now take place on June 26 instead of the previously scheduled June 22, NASA said in a press briefing on Tuesday.
Boeing's space taxi docked with the orbiting lab on June 6 as part of a crucial flight test for NASA. Initially, the crew was supposed to stay on the station for about a week.
Boeing capsule delivers NASA astronauts to space station (2)
NASA will use data from the flight and return mission to determine if Starliner is ready to regularly carry the agency's astronauts to and back from the ISS. If approved, Boeing would share that responsibility with NASA's other commercial partner, Elon Musk's SpaceX, which has been carrying crews to the space station on its Crew Dragon since 2020.
Starliner has suffered multiple delays and setbacks, pushing testing back seven years. This comes at a time when Boeing's aircraft manufacturing process has been under intense scrutiny since earlier this year, when a door on a nearly new 737 Max 9 blew off mid-flight.
After their stay, NASA astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore will climb back into the Starliner for the return home, another crucial test the spacecraft must complete for this mission. The Starliner's purpose is to keep the astronauts safe while passing through Earth's atmosphere. It will eventually land in the southwestern US under parachutes.
Boeing was forced to conduct two unmanned test flights of the Starliner after its first mission in 2019 failed to reach the ISS as planned.
The company has also dealt with rusted valves, parachute issues, flammable tape and other problems that delayed the first crewed test flight. A last-minute helium leak delayed that launch date by about a month. The leak and other leaks discovered during the flight still persist and continue to be evaluated by NASA.
NASA and Boeing are using this extra time to better understand the series of glitches that have plagued Starliner since it was launched into space. Engineers have now detected five separate helium leaks on the Starliner spacecraft.
However, NASA and Boeing believe the leaks should not be a problem for Starliner's return flight. Engineering teams said they are confident that if Starliner had to return home right now for some kind of emergency, it could get the crew back home safely.
“We wouldn't say Starliner is safe to take a crew home in an emergency if we didn't have confidence in the vehicle's capabilities,” said Steve Stich, NASA's commercial crew program manager.
In addition, five of Starliner's thrusters, the mini engines the capsule uses to maneuver in space, failed. Boeing and NASA were able to restart four of the failed thrusters.
NASA and Boeing ran several thrusters over the weekend to see how they worked, and said they were satisfied with their performance.
In the case of the helium leak, NASA and Boeing are still not sure of the root cause. The goal is to use the additional time in space to collect more data to determine the origin of the leak.
“This is the question our engineers are asking themselves,” Boeing program manager Mark Nappi said during the press conference.
(Updates from ninth paragraph with details on thruster problems, leaks.)
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