The two-person crew of Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft will remain at the International Space Station for several more days to allow ground engineers time to examine a new set of problems with the spacecraft.
Officials with the U.S. space agency NASA and aviation giant Boeing announced Tuesday that commander Butch Wilmore and pilot Sunita Williams will not return to Earth before June 26. Officials had previously set June 18 and June 22 as dates for the crew’s possible re-entry.
Wilmore and Williams arrived at the ISS on June 6, one day after launching from the U.S. spaceport in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Their scheduled docking with the space station was delayed when five of its 28 maneuvering thrusters failed as it approached the orbital outpost. The spacecraft has also experienced a series of helium leaks during the mission.
Both problems are located in Starliner’s service module, which is located underneath the capsule. The service module will separate from the capsule and burn up in the atmosphere during re-entry phase, meaning engineers will not be able to get a hands-on look at the module to determine the cause of the problems.
The issues are the latest problems that have plagued Starliner’s crewed test flight even before its June 5 launch. Two previous launch attempts were canceled — the first on May 6, when ground officials noted a faulty oxygen relief valve on the Atlas V rocket’s second stage just after Wilmore and Williams had entered the capsule, the second on June 1, when a failure involving the computer system that controls the countdown’s final minutes with just under four minutes before liftoff.
The veteran astronauts were initially only supposed to remain at the ISS for a week testing the capsule and its subsystems. The flight is the final test before NASA certifies Boeing to conduct routine crewed missions to the ISS as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.
If the Boeing test is successful, it will become the second reliable option for human space flight along with Elon Musk’s SpaceX Dragon capsule. SpaceX has been shuttling NASA astronauts to and from the ISS since 2020.
The Starliner program has experienced years of costly setbacks and delays.
During a 2019 uncrewed test flight, the capsule was on an incorrect trajectory due to a software error and returned without reaching the ISS.
Another launch was postponed in 2021 because of a valve problem. An uncrewed capsule reached the ISS in May 2022. But the spacecraft has experienced several problems since then, including the discovery of flammable tape in the cabin and weak parachutes.
Some information for this report came from Reuters.
