Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were originally scheduled to return to Earth on June 14.
NASA astronauts who were aboard the first manned flight into space on the Boeing Starliner will attend a press conference Wednesday morning.
Flight Commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore, 61, a former US Navy captain, and Sunita Williams, 58, a former Navy member and flight pilot, both currently aboard the International Space Station (ISS), are ready to answer. test flight and mission questions.
Wilmore and Williams launched on June 5 from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and docked with the ISS on June 6.
The pair were originally expected to spend one week aboard the ISS evaluating the spacecraft and its systems, returning on June 14. However, the Starliner experienced several mechanical problems, including a helium leak and a thruster problem, leaving the astronauts stranded aboard the ISS without setup. date of return.
NASA has insisted that Wilmore and Williams are safe while they remain aboard the ISS with the Expedition 71 crew. The agency said the ISS has enough supplies in orbit and the station’s schedule is relatively open until mid-August.
“I want to make it clear that Butch and Suni are not stuck in space,” Steve Stich, NASA Commercial Crew program manager, said during a June 28 teleconference. “Our plan is to continue returning them on the Starliner and bring them home at the right time.
NASA and Boeing say Wilmore and Williams are “integrated” with the Expedition 71 crew aboard the ISS, assisting the crew with station operations as needed, as well as completing “goals” needed for possible certification of NASA’s Starliner.
“Since their arrival on June 6, Wilmore and Williams have completed half of all hands-on research conducted aboard the space station, allowing their crew members to prepare for the departure of Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft,” NASA wrote in a recent update.
This week, teams at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico are conducting ground tests of the Starliner’s propeller, exposing it to conditions similar to those experienced by the spacecraft en route to the ISS, according to an update on Boeing’s website.
The tests will replicate the docking of the Starliner when some of the thrusters failed and what the thrusters experience from disconnection to landing back on Earth.
“We really want to understand the jet and how we use it in flight,” Dan Niedermaier, Boeing’s lead design engineer for jet testing, said in a statement. “We will learn a lot from these shots, which will be valuable for the rest of the crew flight test and future missions.”
The Starliner was plagued with problems even before launch. The flight test was originally tentatively scheduled for May 6, but was scrapped after a problem with an oxygen valve on a rocket from United Launch Alliance, which builds and operates the rockets that launch the Starliner spacecraft into orbit.
A new launch date was subsequently set for May 25, but then a small helium leak was discovered in the Starliner Service Module, which contains support systems and instruments for operating the spacecraft.
These helium leaks and a problem with the thrusters threatened to delay the Starliner’s landing, but it docked successfully. Five days after landing on the ISS, NASA and Boeing announced that the spacecraft had experienced five “small” helium leaks, but added at the time that there was enough helium left for the return mission.