Despite being stranded aboard the International Space Station, Boeing’s crisis-ravaged Starliner team is still in good spirits.
During a livestream Wednesday, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams said they are “absolutely confident” in the spacecraft, from which several helium leaks made their way to the orbital outpost last month.
The capsule has been the subject of much debate, and the space company assured that the overheating of its thrusters, which allow it to maneuver in the microgravity of space, is a serious problem.
Starliner is one of three spacecraft recently docked to the ISS. A total of nine team members are currently on board the station, in addition to Wilmore and Williams. Four of them arrived at the station on May 2 aboard the Dragon Harmony Crew. All three arrived at the station in late March aboard the Soyuz MS-25 capsule.
All seats in the Harmony and MS-25 would be occupied in an emergency, suggesting that Wilmore and Williams would have to be accommodated in the Starliner.
And they already had some practice. Late last month, NASA asked all team members to take shelter in their respective spacecraft after reports indicated that a failed satellite was headed their way.
NASA also argued that the two stranded astronauts could easily surface inside the Starliner in an emergency, despite ongoing technical issues.
Crew Dragon and Starliner were developed under the same commercial crew program as NASA. But while SpaceX has effectively introduced 12 crewed missions since 2020, adding 8 rotating trips to the ISS, Boeing unveiled its first crewed control flight last month.
And if Starliner were deemed unworthy of its return journey, NASA would probably have to come up with a plan B: launch another Crew Dragon spacecraft, or a Soyuz, although that’s a less likely option under the circumstances. higher prices and the geopolitical ramifications.
NASA program manager Steve Stich first denied that there were plans to bring the two stranded astronauts home on another Crew Dragon spacecraft.
“There has been no discussion about taking down any other Dragon to rescue the Starliner crew,” Stich said at a press conference Wednesday, quoted by the New York Times. Stich added that the pair will most likely return to Starliner through the end of the month, about a month and a half after the originally scheduled June 14 return date.
But Stich ruled out this possibility.
“The good thing about the advertising team program is that we have two vehicles, two other systems, that we can use to bring the team back,” he said. “So we have a little more time to take a look at the knowledge and then if we want to do something else. “
“But the most productive option today is to bring Butch and Suni back to Starliner,” he added. “At the moment, we don’t see any explanation why this is not the case. “
The emphasis is on “bonuses”: While NASA still hopes to use Boeing’s locked astronaut pass for Williams and Wilmore’s return trip, Stich’s ambiguous and most likely conscientiously worded statements suggest that the company is also ready to load the pair onto a Crew Drapassn if things go well. push.
Meanwhile, engineers are scrambling to figure out why five of the 28 thrusters in the Starliner’s reaction control formula aren’t working properly. Four of them returned to action and docked with the ISS last month, but they are still not operating at their full potential.
“You can tell it was downgraded, but it was still impressive,” Wilmore said on this week’s livestream.
Thrusters have a very important function on the surface of the ship. Although they do not carry out the deorbitation themselves, they do help orient the ship, as Ars Technica explains.
“What we want to know is that the thrusters can work; whatever their thrust percentage is, we can make them compatible in a package that allows us to go out of orbit,” Williams said. “That’s the main purpose we want for the service module: to get an exit from orbit so we can return. “
Both argue that this is all general for an entirely new and untested spacecraft; there were no difficulties comparable to the first flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon to the station.
“We’re in a complicated situation,” Wilmore said. Manned spaceflight is easy, regardless of the regime, and a lot of disruption has been found with any spacecraft ever designed, and that’s the nature of what we do. “
Read about Starliner: Stranded astronauts have ‘absolute confidence’ in Boeing’s Leaky Starliner
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