NASA and Boeing Co said on Tuesday they were delaying the return of a planned two-member crew from the International Space Station (ISS) to conduct additional tests on their CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, aiming to resolve thruster malfunctions and helium leaks.<\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s commercial crew program manager, Steve Stich, emphasized that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were not \u201cstranded in space,\u201d despite the extended mission duration. \u201cOur plan is to continue to return them on Starliner and return them home at the right time,\u201d Stich said at a briefing.<\/p>\n
The additional tests, scheduled to begin no earlier than July 2 at NASA\u2019s White Sands Test Facility, will focus on replicating issues that caused thruster malfunctions during the spacecraft\u2019s approach to the ISS. \u201cThis will be the real opportunity to examine the thruster just like we had in space on the ground, with detailed inspections,\u201d Stich added.<\/p>\n
Boeing\u2019s vice president and commercial crew program manager, Mark Nappi, acknowledged the challenges in fully understanding and resolving the thruster and helium leak problems. \u201cWe understand these issues for a safe return, but we don\u2019t understand these issues enough yet for us to fix them permanently,\u201d Nappi said.<\/p>\n
Originally scheduled for an eight-day stay at the ISS, the CST-100 Starliner will now remain docked for an extended period to gather crucial data, including from the service module section that is jettisoned at mission\u2019s end. \u201cWe have the luxury of time,\u201d said Ken Bowersox, NASA associate administrator for space operations.<\/p>\n
NASA had initially set a 45-day limit for the mission based on battery life, which can now be extended due to battery performance thus far, according to Stich. However, the extended mission and technical challenges pose obstacles to certifying the spacecraft for future crew rotations, initially targeted for November.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe understand it\u2019s going to take a little bit longer,\u201d Stich said of the certification process, which could affect the timeline for subsequent crew missions.<\/p>\n
During the briefing, Nappi expressed frustration with what he described as negative media coverage of the mission. \u201cWe\u2019ve gotten a really good test flight that\u2019s been accomplished so far and it\u2019s being viewed rather negatively,\u201d Nappi said.<\/p>\n
In addition to updates on the CST-100 Starliner mission, NASA officials discussed the recent postponement of a spacewalk at the ISS due to a water leak in the airlock, as well as the agency\u2019s contract award to SpaceX for the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle (USDV).<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NASA and Boeing Co said on Tuesday they were delaying the return of a planned two-member crew from the International Space Station (ISS) to conduct additional tests on their CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, aiming to resolve thruster malfunctions and helium leaks. NASA\u2019s commercial crew program manager, Steve Stich, emphasized that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[670,1565,233,190,316,1306],"class_list":["post-20034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-boeing","tag-cst-100","tag-iss","tag-nasa","tag-spacex","tag-starliner"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20034"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}