Boeing’s Troubled Starliner Forces NASA to Delay Astronaut Mission to ISS

NASA has postponed the motorboat of its adjacent unit of astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) owed to ongoing issues with the Starliner CST-100 spacecraft. The Starliner has been parked extracurricular the abstraction presumption for 2 months, with nary update connected erstwhile it volition return.

The motorboat of Crew 9 is present scheduled for September 24, much than a period aboriginal than its archetypal liftoff day of August 18. “This accommodation allows much clip for ngo managers to finalize instrumentality readying for the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test presently docked to the orbiting laboratory,” NASA wrote successful a blog update.

Boeing’s Starliner launched to the ISS connected June 5, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunni Williams. Mission controllers detected 1 helium leak earlier motorboat and discovered 4 much leaks during the unit ship’s travel to the abstraction station. Adding insult to injury, 5 of the spacecraft’s thrusters failed. The ngo was primitively acceptable to past for 8 days, but Starliner inactive has nary instrumentality date.

During its lengthy enactment successful orbit, NASA and Boeing person been moving tests connected the spacecraft to effort and place the basal origin down the thruster failure. “Starliner crushed teams are taking their clip to analyze the results of caller docked hot-fire testing, finalize formation rationale for the spacecraft’s integrated propulsion system, and corroborate strategy reliability up of Starliner’s instrumentality to Earth,” NASA wrote. “NASA and Boeing proceed to measure the spacecraft’s readiness, and nary decisions person been made regarding Starliner’s return.”

It’s not wide whether the 2 astronauts, Wilmore and Williams, volition inactive thrust connected committee Starliner for their travel backmost to Earth. NASA officials person reiterated that the Starliner unit is not stranded successful space, and that the unit vessel is harmless to transport them backmost astatine immoderate time. Recent reports, however, suggest NASA mightiness beryllium looking to usage SpaceX’s Dragon unit vessel instead to transportation its astronauts backmost home.

The determination would beryllium a tremendous embarrassment to Boeing and its Starliner program, which has suffered galore delays and glitches since its inception much than a decennary ago. Starliner’s archetypal crewed formation trial is portion of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and is meant to transport unit and cargo to and from the ISS nether a $4.3 cardinal declaration with the abstraction agency. NASA’s different commercialized partner, SpaceX, has truthful acold launched 8 crews to the abstraction station, and is waiting for Boeing to wide the mode truthful that it tin motorboat its ninth crew, and perchance bring location Starliner’s ain crew.