It wasn’t perfect.
Instead of returning home in about eight days, the spacecraft remains docked at the space station, with its return postponed indefinitely, while teams continue to troubleshoot a series of issues with the capsule’s propulsion system, including a helium leak and several thrusters that stopped working at critical moments in the flight.
While the top priority is getting NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry “Batch” Wilmore back to Earth safely, the technical delays and Boeing’s ability to overcome them reflect high stakes not just for the future of the Starliner program but for the company’s future in space. Boeing desperately needs to demonstrate that it can fly astronauts safely and overcome the kinds of technical challenges that have plagued not just its spacecraft but also its commercial aviation division.
Once the mission is complete, NASA and Boeing Starliner has undergone a rigorous process to become certified for regular crew rotation missions that would keep four astronauts aboard the space station for six-month periods. Starliner will join SpaceX’s Dragon, which first carried NASA astronauts in 2020, fulfilling a $4.2 billion contract NASA awarded to Boeing a decade ago.
NASA wants Boeing’s Starliner to serve as a second U.S. transportation system to the space station. SpaceX has been performing that function alone since 2020, but NASA has said it needs two systems in case one fails.
Years of failures, including a failed test flight in 2019 with no astronauts on board, have cost Boeing about $1.5 billion in cost overruns. To reap the rewards of the mission, Starliner needs to begin regular crew-change flights.
“They’re taking a very hard look at it, and I have confidence that they’re not going to deorbit an unsafe vehicle,” said Wayne Hale, former NASA space shuttle program manager and flight director for 40 shuttle flights. “Boeing and SpaceX both make money on these post-certification missions. These are revenue flights. They want to recoup their development costs and actually make money on the effort, so this is important.”
Get caught up in
Stories to keep you up to date
Starliner suffered a series of small helium leaks that baffled NASA and Boeing and caused many delays to takeoff and return. Teams initially thought the leaks were due to a poor seal, but later said the cause was unknown. They are also trying to figure out why five of the spacecraft’s small thrusters suddenly stopped working as the spacecraft approached the space station on June 6, forcing NASA to back up the craft and reignite the thrusters.
Starliner was originally scheduled to return on June 18, but NASA postponed that to June 26. On Friday, NASA postponed the return again to later in July, saying the team needed more time to investigate issues with the propulsion system.
NASA has said there’s no need to rush the astronauts back home, and that the helium leak doesn’t pose a risk to the return. Four of the five thrusters are currently working properly, and the spacecraft is equipped with 28 thrusters, so there’s plenty of redundancy, officials said. The spacecraft can remain docked in space for up to 45 days, giving the crew some breathing room to continue to troubleshoot the problem.
NASA and Boeing have repeatedly stressed that Starliner is healthy and could be used to return astronauts to Earth at any time in the event of an emergency on the space station.
“We’re taking our time and following the standard Mission Management Team process,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager. In a statement“We are making data-driven decisions regarding managing the small leaks in the helium system and thruster performance that were observed during rendezvous and docking.”
Officials said whether the thruster issues and helium leaks can be resolved will play a key role in the certification review.
“We have to fix the helium leak issue,” Stich said at a press conference last week. “We’re not going to do a mission like this again with a helium leak.” The team also needs to determine “what’s causing the thruster loss,” he added. “So we need to do that work after this flight.”
But the certification process isn’t NASA’s primary focus right now. “Right now, our entire team is focused on figuring out what’s going on with the vehicle for crewed flight test and return planning, so we’re not looking too far ahead,” Stich said. “At the end of this summer, we’ll have a clear picture of all the work we have to do after this vehicle returns with the crew and we’ll think about the path forward.”
To prepare for that work, Boeing and NASA want to gather as much data as possible about the system. Boeing has already test-fired the thrusters while the spacecraft is docked to the space station. Boeing and NASA are using simulators on the ground to test different scenarios to get to the root of any problems and ensure the spacecraft’s safety.
Hale said the certification process is a “thorough review.” “And obviously those are two issues that need to be resolved before NASA will allow Boeing to put all of its astronauts on board,” he added. “Thruster failures and helium leaks are issues that we’ve always dealt with in the shuttle program. They’ve been very common.”
He said safety is paramount and that the tragedy of the space shuttle Columbia, which broke apart while returning from orbit in 2003, will always be in the back of people’s minds. “Those lessons have not been forgotten,” he said.
Complicating matters is the fact that the helium and thruster issues are inside Starliner’s service module, which provides most of the spacecraft’s engine power. Before returning to Earth, the module will detach and burn up in the atmosphere. So engineers want to diagnose the problem while they still have access to the hardware. Doing so could give them “valuable insight into system upgrades that we want to implement in the post-certification mission,” Stich said.
“The service module isn’t coming back, so we need to get all the data we can out of it now,” said Mike Massimino, a former NASA astronaut and professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia University. “You want to stay in orbit as long as possible to get that data.”
He said Williams and Wilmore are excited to remain in orbit, especially since Williams last went to space in 2012 and Wilmore in 2015.
“It would be great to spend more time in space,” he said. “I want to go to space too. They were both waiting for that flight. Why rush it?”