At a brief press conference from the space station, Barry “Butch” Wilmore, a veteran of two previous space flights, said that “we’re absolutely confident” about the return trip and that despite the problems on the way to the station, the Starliner was “…really impressive.”
Still, when he took manual control of the autonomous spacecraft as it approached the station on June 6, “he could tell the thrust was degraded,” he said. “Of course we didn’t know why at the time. Failures just happened. You could say it was degraded, but it was still impressive.”
Sunita Williams, who is also on her third space flight, said she had a “really good feeling in my heart that the spacecraft is going to take us home, no problem.”
However, it is not yet clear when that will happen. NASA and Boeing are continuing to conduct ground tests to see if they can determine why the five “reaction control thrusters” used to position the vehicle stopped working during the approach to the station. Four of the five thrusters eventually returned to service and functioned properly, allowing the Starliner to dock successfully. NASA said it would not attempt to use the fifth jet engine for the return trip. The spacecraft is equipped with a total of 28 such thrusters on the service module, which is used to provide power and much of the vehicle’s propulsion.
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In addition to these problems, the Starliner caused five helium leaks in the propulsion system. NASA said the leaks are small and that the spacecraft has enough helium for the remainder of the mission, which is used to pressurize the propulsion system.
In a separate briefing Wednesday, Steve Stich, who oversees NASA’s commercial crew program, said that if all testing reveals no major problems with the jets, the crew could return as early as late July. “But we will watch the data one step at a time and then at the right time we will know when is the right opportunity to disconnect,” he said.
The mission is the Starliner’s first flight with humans on board, a test to see how the vehicle performs before NASA allows the full contingent of four astronauts to fly to the space station for stays of up to six months. SpaceX, the second company NASA relies on for crew transport, has been flying astronauts to the space station since 2020 in its Dragon capsule.
Williams and Wilmore were originally only supposed to stay on the space station for about 10 days, but then NASA delayed the return three times before pushing it back indefinitely while it tried to better understand the spacecraft’s problems.
The teams conducted tests at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, simulating the flight profile to and from the space station to try to figure out what caused the problems.
“We’re really just taking the time to make sure we’ve looked under every rock and every stone,” Stich said. “Just to make sure nothing else surprises us.
He said at a briefing late last month that the crew members were not stranded in space and that there were no plans for any rescue operation. “I want to make it clear that Butch and Suni are not stuck in space,” he said. “Our plan is to continue to return them to the Starliner and bring them home at the right time.”
On Wednesday, he reiterated that “the main option today is to get Butch and Suni back on the Starliner. We don’t see a reason right now why that wouldn’t be the case.” Referring to SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, he added that “we have two vehicles, two different systems that we could use to get the crew back, so we have a little bit more time to go through data and then decide if we need to do something different.”
He added that “there has been no discussion about sending another Dragon to rescue the Starliner crew”.
NASA has repeatedly said the Starliner is authorized to fly astronauts home in an emergency. Late last month, Wilmore and Williams underwent a real-world test when they were forced aboard the Starliner after a satellite disintegrated in orbit, potentially threatening the space station. The wreckage cleared without incident, and the Starliner “performed exceptionally well and as expected for the occasion,” Ed Van Cise, NASA’s flight director, said in a statement.
While on the station, Williams and Wilmore continued to test the spacecraft, including loading a full contingent of four astronauts to test its life support systems.
Williams said being in an orbiting lab “is like coming home. It’s good to float. It feels good to be in space and working here with the International Space Station team. So yeah, it’s great to be up here. I’m not complaining that we’re here for a few extra weeks.”