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When astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams blasted off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on June 5, they thought they’d be back in time for the June 11 holiday.

The two tested Boeing’s newest spacecraft, called the Starliner. All they had to do was test it out, hop aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for a short while, and head home. The whole mission was supposed to last about a week.

Instead, a series of leaks and malfunctions caused NASA to indefinitely delay the duo’s return.

Just whatever you do, don’t say they’re blocked.

“We’re not stuck on the ISS,” Mark Nappi, Boeing’s vice president for the commercial crew program, told reporters at a June 28 news conference. “The crew is in no danger and there is no increased risk when we decide to bring Sunny and Butch back to Earth.

Here’s what’s happening with Boeing’s newest spacecraft.

NASA Boeing Crew Test Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams are seen aboard the International Space Station. The astronauts’ return to Earth has been delayed while NASA conducts additional tests on the Starliner’s thrusters.

NASA

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NASA

There were problems even before this launch

The development of the Starliner is not going smoothly. On its first unmanned test flight in 2019, it failed to reach the expected orbit. The problem was later traced to an onboard clock that was set incorrectly – causing the Starliner’s thrusters to fire at the wrong time.

The Starliner never made it to the ISS on that trip, and NASA is requiring a second test flight without astronauts. When it launched again in 2022, two Starliner thrusters failed to fire as expected. It successfully switched to backup thrusters and docked with the space station.

The astronauts were finally due to lift off last year, but then Boeing discovered two more problems with the spacecraft: problems with the parachute system that would have allowed them to float back to Earth, and a strap used to hold down cables that posed a potential risk of fire. Fixing both issues delayed the launch until this spring.

Finally, Williams and Wilmore were buckled down on May 6 when more problems arose—a stuck valve on the rocket launching the Starliner had to be replaced, and mission engineers discovered that the Starliner itself was leaking helium.

Helium gas is used to pressurize the Starliner’s propulsion system, and it took NASA several weeks to determine that the leaks were not severe enough to cause helium depletion during the mission.

Boeing’s Starliner capsule atop an Atlas V rocket finally lifted off from Space Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on June 5. The launch came after years of delays and setbacks.

John Rau/AP

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John Rau/AP

The pushing cluster leads to excitement

When all systems were finally up and running, the launch of the Starliner went off without a hitch. On June 5, Williams and Wilmore entered orbit.

But as they approached the ISS, new problems arose. Five of the 28 “Response Control System” thrusters aboard the Starliner’s service module shut down unexpectedly, and the spacecraft was left standing just outside the docking port while engineers fixed some problems.

Ultimately, the spacecraft successfully docked with the space station and four of the five thrusters were brought back online. But NASA later revealed that it had found four additional helium leaks in different parts of the spacecraft, bringing the total to five.

NASA now says it needs to conduct additional testing and evaluation of these issues before Williams and Wilmore can return to Earth. Space agency engineers suspect faulty seals may be behind the helium leak, which they say poses little risk. But problems with the thrusters were harder to pin down.

NASA says it will conduct extensive tests of the Starliner thruster at its White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, NM, beginning this week. problems and also confirms that the thrusters can safely be used to bring Williams and Wilmore home.

“Once that testing is complete, then we’ll look at the landing plan,” Steve Stich, program manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, told reporters. The whole process can take several weeks, he says.

Don’t say stuck

Even before the last press conference, the media speculated that Williams and Wilmore might have remained aboard the station. It’s a claim that Boeing, in particular, seems to bristle at.

“The astronauts they are not stranded on the ISS,” read the first line of the company’s statement on the matter, obtained by NPR on June 26.

As the Starliner prepared to dock with the International Space Station, several thrusters failed to fire as expected.

NASA/AP

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NASA/AP

“They’re not stuck in space,” agrees Laura Forczyk, CEO of Astralytical, a space research consulting group. Astronauts are comfortably housed in the International Space Station.

The Starliner is designed to stay in space for up to 210 days, according to Stich. That test flight was originally supposed to be limited to 45 days because of the spacecraft’s battery life, but Stich says the space station is recharging the batteries as designed, and NASA is looking to extend that limit.

In a truly extreme case, NASA could use either SpaceX’s Dragon capsule or a Russian Soyuz capsule to bring the duo home, but Forczyk doubts that would be necessary.

“I don’t see it as anything critical or life-threatening,” Forczyk says. “I just think they’re being very cautious, as they should be, because this vehicle is not working as intended.”

Forczyk notes that the problems with the helium system and thrusters are located in the Starliner Service Module, part of the spacecraft that will be jettisoned before landing. For that reason, she says, engineers may want to keep the Starliner on the station longer so they can collect more data from the module before it burns up on reentry.

In further evidence of NASA’s confidence in Starliner, Williams and Wilmore took shelter in the spacecraft last week after a Russian satellite disintegrated, creating orbital debris that could threaten the station.

“Butch and Sunny boarded the spacecraft, powered up the vehicle, closed the hatch, and were ready to perform a … emergency takeoff and landing,” Stich says.

The Starliner’s future may be in limbo

In 2014, Boeing received a $4.2 billion contract from NASA to build the Starliner. The spacecraft was to regularly transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station within the decade. Those flights are already years behind schedule, and the delays have cost Boeing at least $1.5 billion in losses.

Meanwhile, rival company SpaceX, which received only $2.6 billion, successfully flew humans in 2020 and completed eight regular crewed missions for NASA to the space station.

Ron Epstein, an analyst at Bank of America, says the problems are part of larger problems at the aerospace giant. “I don’t think you can look at it in isolation,” he says.

Boeing also saw problems with its 737 Max jet, including a door that flew off a plane earlier this year, and its delivery of two 747s to be used as the president’s Air Force One was also delayed.

The Starliner will eventually land somewhere in the western United States, just as it did during an unmanned flight in 2022.

Bill Ingalls/NASA/AP

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Bill Ingalls/NASA/AP

At its core, Epstein says these problems are caused by a shift away from “hard engineering” in the company’s management.

“You’ve had management teams over a number of years that have focused more on shareholder returns than the company’s core engineering business,” he says.

The Starliner’s first scheduled flight with astronauts to the ISS is already scheduled for February 2025, but it’s unclear whether NASA will certify the new spacecraft in time. Even if it does, it will likely only make a few flights before NASA retires the space station in the 2030s.

That being said, Epstein says it’s possible that if NASA requires extensive modifications and fixes to the Starliner, Boeing may decide to pull out of the program altogether.

“I think Boeing management has been clear to the investment community that Starliner and some aspects of space are just not core to them,” he says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the company doesn’t want to continue.”

But Boeing’s Nappi says the company is fully committed to the Starliner. “The plain and simple answer to the question is, ‘No, we’re not going to withdraw,'” he says. “That’s our job.”