Boeing Starliner crew not stranded in space, says NASA, but no date set for return

By James Rogers

Boeing's Starliner 'is in good shape,' says manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program

Boeing Co.'s Starliner spacecraft will remain docked at the International Space Station while the aerospace company and NASA conduct further tests into thruster issues and helium leaks.

"The vehicle at station is in good shape," said Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program during a press conference Friday. "I want to make it very clear that [astronauts] Butch [Wilmore] and Suni [Williams] are not stranded in space. Our plan is to continue to return them on Starliner and return them home at the right time.

"We have a little bit more work to do to get there for the final return, but they are safe on space station, their spacecraft is working well and they are enjoying their time on the space station," he added. "I want to reiterate also that Starliner remains available in cases of an emergency or contingency on the space station where the crew would have to return very quickly back to Earth."

Related: Boeing's Starliner launches on historic first crewed flight

Stich explained that on Wednesday night, Wilmore and Williams and the other seven astronauts on the space station went to their respective "lifeboat" vehicles - Boeing's (BA) Starliner, SpaceX's Dragon and Russia's Soyuz - when a satellite broke up, posing a potential debris risk.

"We used Starliner for that safe-haven capability," he said. "Butch and Suni got in the spacecraft, powered the vehicle up, closed the hatch and were ready to execute, should they need to, an emergency undocking and landing."

Helium leaks were detected on Starliner as it approached the space station earlier this month, although Stich noted that a leak check on June 15 found that the leak rates went down. The NASA official also explained that no helium is being leaked while the spacecraft is docked to the orbiting space lab. "We have those manifolds closed - we're not using any consumables in that area while we're docked.

"Now what we're doing is we're taking our time to govern by the fault tree that we put together to look through the system, to look at [and] analyze data," he said. "We're going to continue to verify the helium margins and double-check those before we undock."

Related: Helium leaks detected on Boeing's Starliner as it heads to the International Space Station

Stich also explained that ground-based thruster testing will be undertaken at NASA's White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, starting July 2. "This will be the real opportunity to examine the thruster, just like we've had in space, with on-the-ground, detailed inspection," he said. "Once that testing is done, then we'll look at the plan for landing. We don't have a targeted date today; we're not going to target a specific date until we get that testing completed."

Ground-based testing is important because thrusters on the Starliner service module, which transports the spacecraft's crew module to and from the space station, cannot be examined postflight because the module is jettisoned prior to the crew capsule's re-entry.

After a series of delays, Starliner launched on its historic first crewed flight to the International Space Station on June 5. The capsule arrived at the space station the following day, after last-minute thruster trouble.

Related: Boeing's astronaut capsule arrives at space station after thruster trouble

The capsule was initially expected to be docked with the ISS for at least eight days before transporting Wilmore and Williams back to earth. A return date of June 18 was set, although this was subsequently pushed back.

The crew is not pressed for time to leave the station since there are plenty of supplies in orbit, and the station's schedule is relatively open through mid-August, NASA said in a blog post last week.

Michael Lembeck, an associate professor of aerospace engineering at the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois, told MarketWatch that NASA and Boeing are taking a sensible approach to solving the Starliner problems.

"The service module does not come home, so the only chance that they have to investigate its problems is while it's sitting there at the space station," he said during an interview. "With their ground-based studies, they are probably going further into the investigation, trying to identify potential causes for the problems and, in doing so, they can test their hypotheses."

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Lembeck, a former consultant at Boeing who has also worked at NASA, told MarketWatch that every human spaceflight "has its issues," noting that the space shuttle was plagued with helium leaks. "There's nothing unusual about this for the first flight of a complex vehicle like Starliner," he said.

During Friday's conference call, NASA's Stich discussed the batteries on the Starliner crew module. "We talked about a 45-day limit preflight, limited by the crew-module batteries on Starliner, and we're in the process of updating that limit," he said. "We have been looking at those batteries and their performance on orbit. They are getting recharged by the space station, and that risk hasn't really changed, so the risk for the next 45 days is essentially the same as the first 45 days."

Starliner, he added, is really designed for a 210-day mission and "the systems are performing well."

Related: SpaceX tender offer would value Elon Musk's space company at $210 billion, report says

Boeing shares ended Friday's session down 0.3%.

-James Rogers

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06-29-24 0905ET

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