NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore (right) and Sunny Williams, wearing Boeing spacesuits, leave the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Inspections Building at the Kennedy Space Center for Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida to board the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft for the Crew Flight Test launch on June 5, 2024.
Miguel H. Rodriguez Carrillo | Afp | Getty Images
With NASA astronauts docked at the International Space Station far longer than planned, agency leadership on Wednesday acknowledged potential alternatives to Boeing’s Starliner for returning the crew to Earth.
Still, Boeing’s spacecraft remains the primary option for crew return, officials said.
Officials say the Starliner Calypso capsule could return as soon as later this month from its extended stay on the ISS, pending test results on a faulty propulsion system. Starliner has now been in space for 36 days and counting as the agency and Boeing conduct additional tests in New Mexico before clearing the spacecraft to return.
The mission marks the first time the Starliner has carried humans, flying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams.
NASA’s commercial team manager Steve Stich stressed during a news conference that the first “option today is to get Butch and Sunny back on the Starliner,” adding that “we don’t see any reason” at this time to turn to the agency’s other transportation option , which you would be SpaceX’s Crew Dragon to bring back the astronauts.
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Stich — while acknowledging that a SpaceX capsule could be part of contingency plans in case the Starliner returns from the ISS empty — noted that NASA has yet to “make a decision about whether we need to do something different.”
“We’ve certainly dusted off some of these things to look at in terms of the Starliner, just to be prepared in case we need to use some of these types of things,” Stich said.
“[But] there really was no discussion about sending another Dragon to rescue the Starliner crew,” Stitch later added.
SpaceX’s Endeavor Dragon crew capsule as seen from the International Space Station on May 2, 2024.
NASA
Boeing and NASA on July 3 began testing the spacecraft’s thruster technology back on Earth in White Sands, New Mexico, with the goal of replicating a problem that caused five of Calypso’s thrusters to shut down as the spacecraft maneuvered to jump with the ISS. The ground tests are being done to “make sure that with all these impulses and all the heat we’re putting into it, it’s not going to cause any damage to the thruster,” Stich said.
Stitch noted that a return of the Starliner “in late July” is “optimistic” based on the completion of testing. Boeing and NASA teams at White Sands are conducting inspections of the test engine over the next week.
But “so far we haven’t been able to reproduce the temperatures we’ve seen in flight,” Boeing’s Mark Nappi, vice president of the Starliner program, said at the press conference.
“What we’re trying to do with this testing is fill in some gaps because … what we’re trying to do is find out if the thrusters are working [as expected], then we’ll be able to disconnect and just come back. If the thrusters were somehow damaged, then what would we do differently?” Nappi said.
“We don’t believe we have damaged thrusters, but again we want to fill in the blanks and run this test to make sure,” Nappi added.
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is pictured docked to the International Space Station in orbit over the Mediterranean coast of Egypt on June 13, 2024.
NASA
Wilmore and Williams, speaking to the press from the ISS, expressed confidence that they would return to the Starliner.
“We believe the tests we’re doing are the ones we need to do to get the right answers to give us the data we need to get back,” Wilmore said.
The Starliner was once seen as a competitor to SpaceX’s Dragon, which has made 12 crewed trips to the ISS in the past four years. However, various setbacks and delays have steadily relegated the Starliner to a secondary position for NASA, with the agency planning for SpaceX and Boeing to fly astronauts on alternating flights.
The Starliner crew flight test represents a final major step before NASA certifies Boeing to fly crew on operational six-month missions beginning as soon as February.
