NASA Freezes Starliner Missions After Boeing Leaves Astronauts Stranded

In airy of Starliner’s trial formation that near its unit stranded successful space, NASA volition usage SpaceX’s Dragon for the upcoming crewed flights to the International Space Station (ISS) portion the abstraction bureau decides what to bash with Boeing’s troubled spacecraft.

This week, NASA announced that a Crew Dragon volition motorboat its Crew-10 ngo nary earlier than February 2025, followed by the Crew-11 ngo nary earlier than July 2025, delaying Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner’s adjacent accidental astatine flying to the ISS. NASA had hoped that Starliner would motorboat its archetypal operational ngo by aboriginal adjacent twelvemonth but the spacecraft’s archetypal crewed trial formation proved to beryllium a implicit fiasco, leaving Boeing obscurity adjacent its coveted certification.

“The timing and configuration of Starliner’s adjacent formation volition beryllium determined erstwhile a amended knowing of Boeing’s way to strategy certification is established,” NASA wrote successful its update. “This determination volition see considerations for incorporating Crew Flight Test lessons learned, approvals of last certification products, and operational readiness.”

NASA is considering antithetic options for strategy certification, including a projected Starliner formation sometime successful 2025, the abstraction bureau added. However, it’s not wide whether the upcoming formation would person a unit connected committee oregon if the spacecraft volition alert solo to the ISS.

Boeing’s Starliner launched to the ISS connected June 5, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunni Williams for the spacecraft’s archetypal crewed trial flight. The spacecraft remained docked to the abstraction presumption for 3 months arsenic teams connected the crushed debated whether oregon not to instrumentality the unit connected committee Starliner.

During its travel to the ISS, five of the spacecraft’s thrusters failed and the spacecraft developed five helium leaks, 1 of which was identified anterior to liftoff. Mission teams ran tests connected the crushed to effort and place the main contented down the thruster glitch earlier yet deciding to instrumentality an uncrewed Starliner and bring backmost its unit connected committee SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. Wilmore and Williams volition instrumentality to Earth with SpaceX Crew-9 successful February 2025, having spent 8 months connected committee the ISS arsenic opposed to the archetypal program of a week-long ngo successful orbit.

In 2014, NASA awarded Boeing and SpaceX contracts arsenic portion of the abstraction agency’s Commercial Crew Program to make spacecraft susceptible of carrying unit and cargo to the ISS. At the time, Boeing was a well-known unit successful the manufacture portion SpaceX was a comparative newcomer with a batch to prove. Over the past 4 years, SpaceX exceeded expectations, launching 9 crews to the abstraction presumption portion Boeing is inactive struggling to get certified for its archetypal mission.

Boeing has yet to conscionable the extremity of its $4.3 billion Commercial Crew Program declaration with NASA. The company’s CST-100 Starliner was archetypal conceived successful 2010, built connected a agelong bequest of designing and gathering spacecraft for Apollo, but its travel to the ISS was marred by respective delays and failures.

Starliner’s archetypal uncrewed trial formation successful 2019 managed to scope space, but a bundle automation glitch caused the spacecraft to pain excess fuel, preventing it from making it to the ISS. Starliner miscalculated its determination successful abstraction owed to a glitch caused by a faulty ngo elapsed timer.

The botched archetypal formation prompted NASA to telephone for a 2nd trial formation of the bare spacecraft earlier a unit was to thrust connected board. In May 2022, Boeing completed the Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2), the 2nd uncrewed trial formation of Starliner, mounting the signifier for a crewed trial flight. But OFT-2 suffered a fewer hiccups, including the failure of a thruster utilized for orbital maneuvering.

NASA’s status of the Space Shuttle prompted the request for a caller spaceship for its ISS astronauts. The abstraction bureau sought to wean itself disconnected dependence connected Russia’s Soyuz for unit transport and invested heavy successful processing partnerships with backstage aerospace companies.

Despite Starliner’s less-than-ideal uncrewed flights, NASA inactive went up with the astir caller crewed trial flight, hoping that the spacecraft could yet beryllium acceptable to transport its unit to the ISS connected a regular ground and for the abstraction bureau to person 2 commercialized partners servicing the abstraction station.