Boeing's public relations crisis is over: The company's Starliner spacecraft — and the two astronauts aboard — are currently stranded in space.
After an eight-day mission, American astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore have now spent most of a month aboard their space capsule attached to the International Space Station as engineers continue to troubleshoot Starliner.
It is still unclear when the astronauts will be able to return to Earth. A Boeing spokesperson told the Guardian that they have “adjusted the return of the Starliner Crew Flight Test until after two planned spacewalks on Monday, June 24 and Tuesday, July 2” and added that they “currently have no return date, and will evaluate opportunities following the spacewalk”.
The spokesperson also said that “the crew is not short on time to leave the station, as there are ample supplies on orbit, and station time remains relatively open until mid-August.”
The Starliner launched to space on June 5 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, following two failed launches on May 6 and June 1, respectively.
The NASA-Boeing mission, a year behind schedule and $1.5 billion over budget, began experiencing problems long before its official launch, including issues with the reaction control thrusters and a helium leak.
A Boeing spokesperson said most of the helium leaks and thruster problems “are fixed and not a concern for the return mission.”
“Four out of the five thrusters that were shut down earlier are now functioning normally. This means only one out of 27 thrusters is offline right now. This will not cause any problem in the return mission,” the spokesperson said.
NASA and Boeing officials say the astronauts are not stranded and the technical problems pose no threat to the mission. The spacecraft requires seven hours of free-flight time for a normal end to the mission and “currently has enough helium remaining in its tanks to support up to 70 hours of free flight activity after undocking,” NASA said.
Steve Stich, NASA's commercial crew program manager, said in a press briefing last week: “We are taking our time and following our standard mission management team process. We are letting the data drive our decision-making related to managing the small helium system leak and thruster performance we observed during rendezvous and docking.”
If there is an emergency or a quick departure is required, the spacecraft is allowed to detach from the dock and return to Earth.
“When Starliner is docked, all manifolds are closed for normal mission operations to prevent helium from leaking from the tanks,” NASA said.
If the Starliner is not safely operational, it's possible that Williams and Wilmore will have to travel with the crew on SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, which is currently attached to the opposite side of the International Space Station.
Boeing's latest crisis follows other public crises involving various commercial aircraft, though the company says they operate separately.
The Starliner launch is the sixth maiden flight of a crewed spacecraft in U.S. history, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at a news conference in May. “It started with Mercury, then Gemini, then Apollo, then the space shuttle, then [SpaceX’s] Dragon — and now Starliner,” Nelson said.