Why did the Space Shuttle Starliner Arrive to Earth? The story of a mission that left Williams and Wilmore stranded in space

Hundreds of people have been sent into space by NASA. Doing that is hard, but for an agency like NASA, it is supposed to be as routine as one can expect.

But Boeing can’t catch a break. Soon after Starliner made it to space, there were leaks of helium. The space station started to behave differently after approach to the space station. The crew left the space station safely, however their planned eight day stay has ballooned to 26 days. NASA and Boeing are trying to determine what caused the issues and make sure that Starliner is able to bring back the astronauts.

That is a good move. The Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters could have been prevented by more thorough checks. But it’s one that leaves Williams and Wilmore stuck in space.

Are Suni and Butch stuck on ISS? The case for the return of the astronauts from Cape Canaveral to the Space Station

NASA and Boeing believe that in an emergency the astronauts can take the spaceship home. It seems like being stuck would be if the pair could not come home because of circumstances out of their control and there wasn’t a timetable for when they could return.

When the astronauts lifted off from Cape Canaveral, they thought they’d be back in time for Juneteenth.

“We’re not stuck on ISS,” Mark Nappi, Boeing’s vice president for its Commercial Crew Program, told reporters in a news conference on June 28. Suni and Butch are not in any danger when we bring them back to Earth.

There were new problems as they approached the space station. Five of Starliner’s service module shut themselves down unexpectedly and the craft was left standing outside the docking port, as engineers worked to fix the problem.

The launch of astronauts last year was delayed because of two problems: one with the parachute system and another with the wiring in the craft. Fixing both issues pushed back the launch to this spring.

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

After docking with the space station, four of the five engines were brought back online. But NASA later disclosed it had found four additional helium leaks in different parts of the spacecraft, bringing the total to five.

NASA said that starting this week it will conduct extensive tests on the Starliner engine at its White New Mexico Test Facility. To ensure that the test thruster can safely bring Williams and Wilmore home, engineers will conduct simulations of dockings, launches, and landing burns to see if they can duplicate the problems.

The program manager of NASAs Commercial Crew Program said that the plan for landing would be looked at once testing was done. He says the process could take several weeks.

Even before the latest press conference, news media was speculating that Williams and Wilmore might be stuck aboard the station. It’s a claim that Boeing, in particular, seems to bristle at.

In a real pinch, NASA could use either a SpaceX Dragon capsule or a Russian Soyuz capsule to bring the duo home, but Forczyk doubts that will be necessary.

Source: ‘We’re not stuck.’ Why Boeing’s Starliner isn’t returning to Earth (yet)

Why Boeing’s Starliner isn’t returning to Earth (yet): Why the Space Experiment is taking a hard look at the problems

“I don’t see this as being anything critical, or life-threatening,” Forczyk says. I think they are extra cautious because the vehicle is not functioning as it should.

Forczyk notes that the problems with the helium system and the thrusters are located in Starliner’s service module, a section of the spacecraft that will be jettisoned before landing. She says engineers may want to keep Starliner at the station longer so that they can gather more data before it burns up.

The vehicles were powered up and ready to land when Butch and Suni got in.

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

Ron Epstein says the problems are part of bigger problems at the company. “I don’t think you can look at it in isolation,” he says.

A door that flew off of an airplane earlier this year was one of several problems that Boeing has had with its Max aircraft.

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

Source: ‘We’re not stuck.’ Why Boeing’s Starliner isn’t returning to Earth (yet)

On the Status of Starliner and the NASA/Boeing-Station Effort to certify its First Flight to ISS

Starliner’s first regular flight carrying astronauts to ISS is now scheduled for February 2025, but it’s unclear whether NASA will certify the new spacecraft in time. Even if it did, it would likely conduct just a handful of flights before NASA retires the Space Station in 2030.

Given all that, Epstein says it’s possible that, if NASA requires extensive modifications and fixes to Starliner, Boeing may decide to walk away from the program altogether.