Nearly two months after Boeing’s Starliner returned to Earth without its astronauts, NASA is still working to resolve issues that complicated the spacecraft’s first crewed test flight, agency officials said Friday (Oct. 25). .
The Starliner Crew Flight Test (CFT) concluded on September 6, with the capsule landing autonomously in New Mexico. Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams were supposed to be on board NASA’s spacecraft, but propulsion problems with the Starliner made the crew’s return to Earth too risky, the agency said.
Boeing is supposed to send six future astronaut missions to the International Space Station (ISS) before 2030. But NASA officials told reporters on Friday that it could be some time before the Starliner’s path is set.
“We’re just getting started on it — just trying to understand how to debug and correct the issues that are on the table,” said Richard Jones, deputy director of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program at Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston. “Timelines related to the duration, what will be required in the field, [are] “It is before us, and we will work hard to find out.”
Jones provided the update on Starliner at the post-landing press conference for SpaceX’s Crew-8, which was the California-based company’s eighth operational astronaut mission to the International Space Station for NASA. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon ship, which transports astronaut crews, is based on the Dragon cargo spacecraft that first flew into space in 2012.
Related to: When will the Boeing Starliner fly astronauts again? NASA still doesn’t know
Boeing did not have a cargo plane for the Starliner to rely on, so developing that capsule was more complicated. Unmanned missions to the International Space Station in 2019 and 2022 had several propulsion issues that NASA and Boeing believed had been resolved before allowing Willmore and Williams, former U.S. Navy test pilots, to fly the CFT, the first test mission with astronauts.
The CFT was launched on June 5 and joined the International Space Station the next day. But five of the 28 thrusters in the Starliner’s reaction control system misbehaved as the capsule chased the orbiting laboratory, delaying the arrival.
Boeing and NASA have been investigating propulsion issues for months, repeatedly delaying the Starliner’s departure from the International Space Station. But they were unable to determine the root cause and devise a cure before sending the capsule to Earth.
The CFT astronauts have been reassigned to Crew-9’s Crew Dragon for return home, which is expected in February 2025. This means that Willmore and Williams, both veteran ISS astronauts before this mission, will spend about eight months in space Instead of 10 days, the original expected duration of the CFT.
However, NASA pulled a four-month reserve of food, water, clothing and other resources on the ISS to keep the duo supplied — and topped that reserve with cargo brought on robotic resupply ships. Wilmore and Williams switched to ISS missions, and as other astronauts departed, their accelerated withdrawal of space station supplies stopped. Perhaps the biggest operational change was Crew-9 itself, which launched with only two astronauts instead of the expected four to make room for the CFT duo.
CFT was always classified as a developmental mission, meaning timelines were uncertain as the spacecraft was not fully certified for astronauts. The first operational mission, Starliner-1, is supposed to launch in 2025; However, the timeline and the three astronauts assigned may change as the Starliner’s future becomes clearer.
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