When you purchase through link on our site , we may earn an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it work .
There is still no return date for Boeing ’s ground Starliner astronauts , who have been stuck on theInternational Space Station(ISS ) since June after their spacecraft develop multiple issues , NASAhas annunciate .
Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams rode to celestial orbit in Boeing ’s spacecraft following years of delays , successfully blasting offon Starliner ’s inaugural crewed flight from Florida ’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on June 5 . They were scheduled to quell a week in compass .
The Starliner spacecraft approaches the International Space Station on Thursday, June 6, 2024
But during the flight of steps the spacecraft stomach a series of issues , let in fivehelium leaksand five failures of its reaction control system of rules ( RCS ) thrusters , forcing technologist to troubleshoot yield on the ground . This extended the two astronauts ' stay aboard the International Space Station ( ISS ) to the current 50 days .
Yet NASA and Boeing say that even though ground test have been complete , there is still no clear date for a flight of steps home .
" We do n’t have a major promulgation today proportional to a issue date,“Steve Stich , the program handler for NASA ’s Commercial Crew Program , said at a news conference on Thursday ( July 25 ) . " We ’re making great progress , but we ’re just not quite quick to do that . "
Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore at Kennedy Space Station in Florida before embarking on Starliner.
When the cosmonaut will deliver remains unclear , but NASA officials have antecedently said that the spacecraft has enough fuel to remain in area until mid - August at the former .
Related : Fixing Boeing ’s talebearing Starliner — and returning NASA ’s stranded astronauts to Earth — is much harder than it sounds
Starliner was build as a part of NASA ’s Commercial Crew Program , a partnership between the agency and private companies to take cosmonaut into low-toned Earth orbit following the retreat of NASA ’s space shuttle broadcast in 2011.SpaceX ’s Crew Dragon also came from this initiative and has tallied13 crewed flightssince it began operating in 2020 .
But Starliner ’s journeying into reach has been much more troubled . A software glitch on its first uncrewed test flight pushed Starliner onto the wrong orbit , and a 2nd attempt was scrub due to a defective fuel valve . Other issues , include problems with chute and the motivation to removenearly a mile(1.6 kilometer ) of flammable tape , also subsequently cropped up .
The current , third crew flight of steps effort was briefly delay by issues with a vibrating oxygen valve and a small but dogged helium escape . engine driver at last deemed the craft safe to pilot despite those issue . After liftoff , the escape multiplied and several thruster conked out , delay the wiliness ’s moorage with the ISS ’s Harmony mental faculty and later put over its return to Earth .
NASA official say the spacecraft is still dependable , and that the return has been delayed this long so that scientist can collect as much data as potential on the malfunction RCS thruster before they are jettisoned and burn up upon reentry .
" The last several weeks have been really useful in translate thruster and He anomalies and how to address these problems for next flight , " Mark Nappi , Boeing frailty United States President and the manager of the company ’s commercial crowd program , say at the news group discussion . " That ’s been the veridical goal here . "
To better understand how these thrusters — which are essential for tilt the guile at the right slant to enter Earth ’s standard pressure — might behave , engine driver at Starliner ’s facility in White Sands , New Mexico , have been disassemble copy of them , inspecting them part by part for potential faults , and firing them to amass datum .
During their extended time aboard the ISS , Wilmore and Williams have do a number of maintenance labor and scientific projects . Once a week , they have return to the Starliner capsule to act through the pusher issues with engineers at terra firma control .
— NASA set to launch 2 garden rocket into the northern Light
— China discovers strange shabu beads on moon that may contain billions of tons of water
— NASA offers SpaceX $ 843 million to destroy the International Space Station
The astronauts ' halt has been largely safe but not wholly without incident . On June 27 , a defunct Russian satellitebroke aside in orbit , charge dust toward the ISS and forcing Williams and Wilmore , along with the other seven astronauts on board , to take cover inside their respective space capsules .
Speaking at a July 10news conferencebeamed from the ISS , Wilmore and Williams told reporters that they were confident Starliner could return them to Earth safely .
When take about backup plans to return the spaceman without Starliner , Stitch say that contingency plans involving SpaceX ’s Crew Dragon have been looked into , but their direction was on using Boeing ’s trade .
" Obviously the backup option is to use a dissimilar system . I would rather not go into all those detail until we get to that metre — if we ever get to that time , " Stitch said . " We really have our team focused on , as we close in on this final flight rationale , return Butch and Suni on Starliner . "
