Starliner Faces an Indefinite Wait in Space While NASA Investigates Its Faults

In an update released precocious Friday evening, NASA said it was “adjusting” the day of the Starliner spacecraft’s instrumentality to Earth from June 26 to an unspecified clip successful July.

The announcement followed 2 days of agelong meetings to reappraisal the readiness of the spacecraft, developed by Boeing, to alert NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to Earth. According to sources, these meetings included high-level information from elder leaders astatine the agency, including subordinate head Jim Free.

This “Crew Flight Test,” which launched connected June 5 atop an Atlas V rocket, was primitively owed to undock and instrumentality to Earth connected June 14. However, arsenic engineers from NASA and Boeing studied information from the vehicle’s problematic flight to the International Space Station, they person waved disconnected respective instrumentality opportunities.

On Friday nighttime they did truthful again, citing the request to walk much clip reviewing data.

“Taking Our Time”

“We are taking our clip and pursuing our modular ngo absorption squad process,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, in the NASA update. “We are letting the information thrust our determination making comparative to managing the tiny helium strategy leaks and thruster show we observed during rendezvous and docking.”

Just a fewer days ago, connected Tuesday, officials from NASA and Boeing acceptable a instrumentality day to Earth for June 26. But that was earlier a bid of meetings connected Thursday and Friday during which ngo managers were to reappraisal findings astir 2 important issues with the Starliner spacecraft: 5 abstracted leaks successful the helium strategy that pressurizes Starliner’s propulsion strategy and the nonaccomplishment of 5 of the vehicle’s 28 reaction-control strategy thrusters arsenic Starliner approached the station.

The NASA update did not supply immoderate accusation astir deliberations during these meetings, but it is wide that the agency’s leaders were not capable to get comfy with each contingencies that Wilmore and Williams mightiness brushwood during a instrumentality formation to Earth, including safely undocking from the abstraction station, maneuvering away, performing a de-orbit burn, separating the unit capsule from the work module, and past flying done the planet’s ambiance earlier landing nether parachutes successful a New Mexico desert.

Spacecraft Has a 45-Day Limit

Now, the NASA and Boeing engineering teams volition instrumentality immoderate much time. Sources said NASA considered June 30 arsenic a imaginable instrumentality date, but the bureau is besides keen to execute a brace of spacewalks extracurricular the station. These spacewalks, presently planned for June 24 and July 2, volition present spell ahead. Starliner volition marque its instrumentality to Earth sometime afterward, apt nary earlier than the July 4 holiday.

“We are strategically utilizing the other clip to wide a way for immoderate captious presumption activities portion completing readiness for Butch and Suni’s instrumentality connected Starliner and gaining invaluable penetration into the strategy upgrades we volition privation to marque for post-certification missions,” Stich said.

In immoderate sense, it is adjuvant for NASA and Boeing to person Starliner docked to the abstraction presumption for a longer play of time. They tin stitchery much information astir the show of the conveyance connected long-duration missions—eventually Starliner volition alert operational missions that volition alteration astronauts to enactment connected orbit for six months astatine a time.

However, this conveyance is lone rated for a 45-day enactment astatine the abstraction station, and that timepiece began ticking connected June 6. Moreover, it is not optimal that NASA feels the request to proceed delaying the conveyance to get comfy with its show connected the instrumentality travel to Earth. During a brace of quality conferences since Starliner docked to the station, officials person downplayed the wide seriousness of these issues—repeatedly saying Starliner is cleared to travel location “in lawsuit of an emergency.” But they person yet to afloat explicate wherefore they are not yet comfy with releasing Starliner to alert backmost to Earth nether mean circumstances.

This communicative primitively appeared on Ars Technica.