NASA astronauts who traveled to orbit on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft are currently stranded in space aboard the International Space Station (ISS) after engineers discovered several problems with Boeing’s spacecraft. Teams on the ground are now racing to assess the Starliner’s condition.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams were originally scheduled to return to Earth on June 13 after a week on the International Space Station, but their stay has been extended for a second time due to ongoing problems. The astronauts will now return home no later than June 26, according to NASA.
After years of delays, Boeing’s Starliner capsule successfully lifted off on its inaugural crewed flight from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 10:52 a.m. EDT on June 5. But during the 25-hour flight, engineers discovered five separate helium leaks in the spacecraft. Motivation system.
Now, to give engineers time to troubleshoot, NASA has announced that it will postpone the risky return trip, extending the crew’s stay on the space station to at least three weeks.
“We learned that our helium system was not performing as designed,” Mark Nappi, Boeing’s Starliner program manager, said in a press conference on June 18. “And even though it could be controlled, it still wasn’t performing as we designed it. So we You have to go find out.”
The Starliner spacecraft’s re-entry module is currently docked with the Harmony module on the International Space Station as NASA and Boeing engineers evaluate issues with critical hardware on board, including five helium leaks into the system that stresses the spacecraft’s propulsion system, and five thrust failures in its reaction -Control system.
Related: China’s secret space plane launched another unknown object above Earth
After turning on the thrusters on June 15, engineers found that most of these problems appear to have been at least partially resolved, but their exact causes remain unknown.
However, the Harmony module’s limited fuel means the Starliner can only remain at anchor for 45 days, so the window for a safe return flight is narrowing.
These issues are the latest in a long list of setbacks and headaches for Boeing’s spacecraft. The company built the Starliner capsule as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, a partnership between the agency and private companies to fly astronauts into low Earth orbit after NASA’s space shuttles were retired in 2011. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon also came from this initiative and has Achieve 12 manned flights Since I started working in 2020.
But the Starliner’s first unmanned test flight in 2019 was aborted due to a software error that put it in the wrong orbit, and a second attempt was hampered by problems with a fuel valve. After further reviews last year, the company had to fix problems with the capsule’s parachutes and remove about a mile (1.6 kilometers) of tape that was found to be flammable.
The current mission is Boeing’s third attempt to transport the crew to the International Space Station. The former two were cleaned up by a vibrating oxygen valve on the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket on which the Starliner was installed (which was developed by Lockheed Martin) and a computer glitch in the ground launch sequencer, respectively.
“Beer aficionado. Gamer. Alcohol fanatic. Evil food trailblazer. Avid bacon maven.”