Boeing's Starliner spacecraft is set to mark its crowning achievement this month: carrying two NASA astronauts on a round trip to the International Space Station, proving the long-delayed and overpriced capsule is up to the task.
Starliner is halfway to that goal.
But the two veteran astronauts piloting this test flight are now in a tentative position: Extending their stay aboard the space station for a second time, while engineers on the ground rush to learn more about the problems plaguing it. first part of their journey.
Spaceflight veterans Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore arrived at the space station aboard the Starliner on June 6. NASA initially predicted their stay would last about a week.
But problems the vehicle encountered along the way, including helium leaks and thrusters that abruptly stopped working, have raised questions about how the second half of the mission will proceed.
Williams and Wilmore will now return no earlier than June 26, NASA announced Tuesday, extending their mission to at least 20 days as engineers race to better understand the spacecraft's problems as it safely docks with the space station is attached.
Officials have said there is no reason to believe Starliner won't be able to bring the astronauts home, although "we really want to go through the rest of the data," Steve Stich, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager, said Tuesday. news conference.
Meanwhile, Boeing has tried to frame the mission as a success and learning opportunity, albeit one that has left the Starliner team struggling with the "unplanned" side of the mission, as Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager of the Starliner program from Boeing, put it on Tuesday.
It is not unusual for astronauts to unexpectedly extend their stay aboard the space station - by days, weeks or even months. (NASA has also said the Starliner could stay in the orbiting laboratory for up to 45 days if necessary, Stich said.)
But the situation creates a moment of uncertainty and embarrassment that joins a long list of similar blunders by the Boeing Starliner program, which has been years behind schedule. It also adds to a chorus of unfavorable news that has been following Boeing as a company for some time.
A nail-biting finale
Engineers from Boeing and NASA said they are opting to keep Starliner - and thus Williams and Wilmore - on board the station longer than expected, mainly to conduct additional analysis. The helium leaks and problems with the thrusters occurred in a part of the vehicle that is not intended to survive the journey home from space, so mission teams are delaying the spacecraft's return as part of a last-ditch effort to recover everything. find out about what went wrong.
Danger looms every time a spacecraft returns home from orbit. It is perhaps the most dangerous leg of any space mission.
During the journey, the Starliner must hit Earth's thick atmosphere while traveling more than 22 times the speed of sound. The process will bake the exterior of the spacecraft to approximately 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Then, a series of parachutes - which Boeing recently redesigned and tested in January - should safely slow the capsule before it reaches solid ground. (Starliner will be the first US-made capsule to land on the ground with a parachute instead of crashing into the ocean. Boeing hopes this approach will make it easier to recover and refurbish the Starliner after the flight .)
A series of setbacks
Starliner's journey to this historic crewed test mission began in 2014 when NASA tapped both Boeing and SpaceX to develop a spacecraft that could transport astronauts to the International Space Station.
At the time, Boeing was seen as the tough aerospace giant likely to get the job done first, while SpaceX was the unpredictable newcomer.
Over the past decade, however, the tides have changed.
SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft safely completed its first crewed mission - which appeared to go off without a hitch - in 2020. And since then, the vehicle has regularly ferried astronauts and paying customers.
The two astronauts who piloted Crew Dragon's first flight - Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley - also stayed aboard the space station longer than expected, spending more than 60 days instead of the short period expected on such test flights.
But Hurley and Behnken's stay was extended so that the astronauts could lend a hand with daily activities aboard the space station, which was understaffed at the time. The expansion did not directly address specific software or hardware issues with SpaceX's Crew Dragon.
On the other hand, spacecraft problems have marred Boeing's Starliner program at virtually every step. The vehicle has suffered years of delays, setbacks and additional costs that have cost the company more than $1 billion, according to public financial records.
The first Starliner test mission, conducted without a crew in late 2019, was full of missteps. The vehicle failed in orbit, a symptom of software problems, including a coding error that caused an internal clock to be knocked off 11 hours.
A second unmanned flight test in 2022 revealed additional software issues and problems with some of the vehicle's thrusters.
Stich, NASA's program manager, indicated during a June 6 news conference that engineers may not have fully resolved these issues as of 2022.
"We thought we had solved that problem," Stich said, adding, "I think we're missing something fundamental that's going on in the thruster."
Michael Lembeck, an associate professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a consultant for Boeing's aerospace division from 2009 to 2014, told CNN that it would be difficult to determine whether additional ground tests could fix the problems with the thrusters. have tracked down. at hand.
But Lembeck emphasized that evaluating the success of this test mission is not as simple as comparing it directly to the inaugural crewed test flight of SpaceX's Crew Dragon.
For example, he said, SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule - a predecessor to Crew Dragon - completed more than a decade of unmanned cargo missions to the space station before Crew Dragon took off.
"SpaceX did have a head start with the cargo program," Lembeck said. "I think they have an advantage that Boeing didn't have. Boeing has to build a crew vehicle from scratch."
However, if this Starliner test mission experiences further setbacks, it could put Boeing in a situation where it has to rely on its rival to get Williams and Wilmore home.
"The embarrassing backup is that a Crew Dragon would have to go pick up the astronauts," Lembeck said. The spacecraft "could be sent up with two crew members and returned with four - and that would probably be the way home."
Boeing's broader problems
Boeing executives have repeatedly tried to make clear that the Starliner program operates independently of the company's other units - including its commercial aircraft division that has been at the center of scandal for years.
"We have people flying in this vehicle. We always take that so seriously," Nappi said during a news briefing in April before Starliner departed.
Nappi also stated at the time that the Starliner team was operating at "peak performance" and was "really looking forward to" executing a safe mission.
When asked about that claim on Tuesday, Stich, the NASA director, said officials at Boeing and NASA had always expected to encounter additional problems that would need to be resolved during this test flight.
Williams had alluded to that expectation during a pre-flight press conference, saying, "We're always finding things, and we're going to find things all the time."
"Everything won't be absolutely perfect when we fly the spacecraft. ...We feel very safe and comfortable with the way this spacecraft is flying, and we have backup procedures in place in case we need them," Williams said.
However, Stitch acknowledged Tuesday that Boeing and NASA might have been able to prevent some of the problems the Starliner experienced: "We might have been able to run several tests on the ground to characterize some of the problems with the thrusters in advance. " he said.
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