The first crewed mission aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has been in orbit for more than a month now, but no planned return date has yet been set.
Starliner Released on June 5th Crew Flight Test (CFT) with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board International Space Station The capsule is scheduled to stay aboard the International Space Station for one week. Helium leaks and thruster problems However, the Starliner has not yet been cleared to depart as a problem occurred during the trip and engineers are still investigating the cause.
“We’re taking time on the ground to review all of the data before making a decision about a potential return mission,” Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, said at a press conference on Wednesday (July 10).
NASA, Boeing, and the two CFT astronauts are still StarlinerBut at a separate media event on Wednesday, Wilmore praised the capsule’s in-orbit performance during operational checks. “The spacecraft performed incredibly well,” he said.
Wilmore also spoke about an issue that occurred with Starliner’s Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters while tracking the ISS, and how the mission addressed the issue.
“We lost one RCS jet, then the other, and we saw a loss of thrust, control and capability,” he explained. “Fortunately, we had practiced and were manually qualified, so we were able to take over manual control for over an hour.”
Related: NASA says Boeing’s Starliner can stay in space beyond the 45-day limit
rear Arrived at the ISS on June 6thWilmore and Williams joined the ISS’s Expedition 71 crew, which Williams said is now informally called “Expedition 71+.” Wilmore and Williams were responsible for day-to-day maintenance and science experiments, and were able to complete some of the tasks that had been stalled on the ISS. During the mission, the pair also continued to check Starliner’s many systems and any anomalies they encountered, which Boeing engineers also reviewed. Earth To find out the cause.
Stich highlighted the meticulous approach taken to analyze data and replicate the spacecraft’s thruster issues during tests at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico. One advantage of the ISS, he said, is that it can act as a temporary orbital “hangar,” providing a unique opportunity to understand Starliner’s long-term performance in space before undocking.
In addition to the thruster issues, the Starliner capsule has had multiple helium leaks. “We’ve identified a number of specific actions based on helium and thruster anomalies,” Mark Nappi, Boeing’s vice president and commercial crew program manager, said Wednesday. “Just over 30.” [actions]More than half of them are currently closed.”
“We expect to report the helium leak to the Starliner Mission Management Team later this week for final resolution,” Stich said. Despite these issues, the spacecraft is still capable of leaving the ISS in an emergency, NASA officials said, and all but one of its 28 RCS thrusters remain ready for use during re-entry to the ISS. Earth’s atmosphere.
The decision to extend Starliner’s mission also provided the ground team with some unexpected extra time, Nappi said, and Amy Decker of Starliner’s chief engineer office said the extra data they’re getting is “AWESOME, in all capital letters.”
“The more data we have, the more time we have. [the engineers get]”
Related: Starliner: Boeing’s next-generation astronaut spacecraft
Stich said Starliner won’t be back with Wilmore and Williams until mid-August at the earliest.
“The big driving force is Crew 8 Stitch said, SpaceX Astronaut mission to the ISS. “So… a few days before that… [Crew-9] When the launch opportunity comes, we have to take Butch and Suni home on the Starliner.”
But ideally, they’d return sooner. “We’re working diligently to determine the earliest date for an undocking and landing target, according to the data,” Stich said. “Some of the data suggests that optimistically, we could probably achieve this by the end of July, but we’re going to take it step by step and follow the data to determine when the right undocking opportunity is.”
“We have a lot of confidence in our current thrusters,” Nappi said, referring to test firings of the thrusters in orbit while Starliner was docked to the ISS.
“What we do is take the time to look under every rock and stone to make sure there’s nothing else there that would surprise us,” Stitch replied.
The CFT follows two unmanned Starliner missions to the ISS. December 2019The first attempt was plagued by a number of problems and failed to reach the orbital laboratory. May 2022The docking was successful, but the spacecraft experienced thruster problems.
“We knew we would learn something from this flight test,” Nappi said. “We learned a lot: how the hardware works, how the process works, and how to improve it.”
Right now, “we have one thruster that’s only putting out very low thrust, and we’re going to disable it for the remainder of the flight,” Stich explained.The extended stay aboard the ISS will also allow the team to prepare the spacecraft for future operational astronaut missions, expected to last up to six months starting with Starliner 1 in 2025.
The tests at White Sands during the CFT helped planners look ahead to the first operational mission and think about how to prevent similar thruster issues from occurring.
Stich said Starliner’s thrusters pulsed more frequently this time than engineers had anticipated.
“What we’re trying to do at White Sands is to accurately replicate the pulse that the thrusters observed, understand the heating effects of that pulse and make sure that the pulse doesn’t have any unintended consequences,” he said.
Stich said he thinks there are ways to revise requirements for future rendezvous and docking operations based on what the team observes with the thrusters during CFT. “I think that’s the challenge we’ll be addressing with Starliner 1,” he said.
As the CFT mission continues, the focus is on ensuring the safe return of Wilmore and Williams. “Starliner is ready to return in an emergency,” Stich confirmed. Teams are moving forward with processes that include flight readiness checks and preparing for Starliner’s eventual undocking and landing.
