NASA says the Boeing Starliner will extend its first astronaut mission into the summer after taking off June 5 for what was supposed to be a 10-day flight.
Starliner experienced helium leaks and thruster problems during docking with the International Space Station (ISS) on June 6. The spacecraft is stable and has the ability to leave the ISS in an emergency, stress Boeing and NASA management. But after testing the jets in space, NASA and Boeing said they wanted more time to understand the root cause.
The test campaign will begin as early as July 2 at the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico to mimic how the jets were used in flight, NASA Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich said during a live update today (June 28) with reporters. Testing will take around two weeks, but that depends on what is found – and further analysis will be required after that. As such, NASA and Boeing do not yet have a Starliner landing date.
“We’re not going to target a specific date until we finish testing, look at the fault tree, and then understand the path to it,” Stich said.
Related: Thruster malfunctions and helium leaks can’t stop Boeing Starliner astronauts’ test flight — but why do they happen?
The 10-day Starliner crew test flight mission with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, both former US Navy test pilots, is a development mission that has built-in flexibility for unexpected events in space.
The unexpected event occurred on June 6 during docking, as an ongoing slight helium leak and five malfunctioning thrusters affected the Starliner’s final approach to the ISS. NASA delayed the first docking attempt to ensure the Starliner was ready for liftoff, but authorized a second attempt that brought the spacecraft into a dock at the orbital complex.
Additional testing and inspection of the helium supply and five nozzles (out of 28 in the reaction control system) revealed that the leak had stabilized and that most of the nozzles were recovering. However, NASA and Boeing chose not to use at least one of these thrusters during the landing due to performance concerns.
Before today’s teleconference, the last major update from Starliner officials came on June 21st, which indicated that the landing would be sometime after July 2nd. Analysis continues today, teleconference participants noted, and even more tests may be needed on the spacecraft, depending on what’s at White Sands.
“When it’s all done, we’ll come together and make sure we’ve done everything we need to understand the system and then come home safely,” said Mark Nappi, Boeing’s vice president and program manager for commercial crew. program. Nappi emphasized that the timing of what will happen next cannot yet be said. “These tests are unpredictable [as to] how long it takes and how successful they will be.”
Related: Will Boeing’s Starliner problems delay its first long-duration astronaut flight? It’s too early to tell.
While the analysis continues on site, Wilmore and Williams have devoted their time to other ISS duties such as maintenance. “They know it’s a test flight and they know we’re going to learn, and that’s all good. It’s not all unexpected,” Nappi said of the crew’s comments in recent communications with Boeing from orbit.
The Starliner is a new type of spacecraft from Boeing, unlike the other commercial crew supplier that carries astronauts to the ISS: SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which is based on the Cargo Dragon design. Starliner undertook two uncrewed missions to prepare for the CFT, after the first attempt failed to reach the ISS in 2019 due to computer malfunctions.
Meanwhile, Dragon completed one uncrewed mission in 2019 and a single astronaut flight test in 2020 before launching manned operational missions to the ISS every six months.
After the COVID-19 pandemic and dozens of repairs, the second unmanned Starliner test flight reached the ISS safely in 2022 after also experiencing problems with the thrusters during docking. One of the reasons the CFT was docked for an extended period of time is to evaluate the service module, which houses most of the fuel, as it will be jettisoned during landing. This testing may reveal more about why the Starliner propulsion system had problems during dockings in 2022 and 2024.