Boeing and NASA engineers have completed ground tests on the Starliner’s propulsion engine.

Engineers from Boeing and NASA spent much of the past month conducting ground tests on Starliner’s reaction control system (RCS) to get a better idea of ​​what happened during Starliner’s active flight in early June, and they finally finished that last week. In their latest update, The teams said they were able to replicate the thrust degradation experienced by the Starliner and are now reviewing all the data. But the return date for astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams is still uncertain — NASA and Boeing have said they will make the trip “in the coming weeks.”

In tests conducted at the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, teams simulated conditions from Starliner’s last flight, putting the propulsion control system “through one of the most stressful launch sequences from launch to docking with more than 1,000 pulses of CFT simulations.” [Crew Flight Test] “According to Boeing, they also tested the deorbit separation and burn scenarios that Starliner will experience on its way home. After collecting terabytes of data from those tests, the teams conducted additional, more aggressive tests “to see if we could more closely simulate the higher thermal conditions that the thrusters would experience in flight,” said Dan Niedermayer, Boeing’s engineer in charge of thruster testing.

Engineers are in the process of “taking the engine apart and checking it out,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said Thursday. After their analysis, NASA NASA says it will review flight test preparations to determine if Starliner is in good shape to return astronauts. NASA and Boeing said they will release more information at a conference in the coming days.