NASA Nears Determination Time on Boeing Starliner’s Destiny

With no consensus on the protection of the Starliner crew capsule, NASA officers mentioned Wednesday they want one other week or two earlier than deciding whether or not to convey two astronauts again to Earth on Boeing’s spacecraft or lengthen their keep on the Worldwide Area Station till subsequent 12 months.

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, suffering from suspect thrusters and helium leaks, is taking on a beneficial parking spot on the house station. It must depart the orbiting analysis advanced, with or with out its two-person crew, earlier than the launch of SpaceX’s subsequent Dragon crew mission to the station, scheduled for September 24.

“We are able to juggle issues and make issues work if we have to lengthen, nevertheless it’s getting quite a bit tougher,” mentioned Ken Bowersox, affiliate administrator of NASA’s spaceflight operations directorate. “With the consumables we’re utilizing, with the necessity for the usage of the ports for cargo missions, these sorts of issues, we’re reaching a degree the place that final week in August, we actually ought to be making a name, if not sooner.”

Final week, NASA officers mentioned they anticipated to decide in mid-August—presumably this week—however Bowersox mentioned Wednesday NASA most likely will not make the ultimate name on what to do with the Starliner spacecraft till the tip of subsequent week, or the start of the week of August 26.

“We’ve received time out there earlier than we convey Starliner residence and we need to use that point correctly,” Bowersox mentioned.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams launched inside Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on June 5. Their mission is the primary crew take a look at flight on Boeing’s capsule earlier than NASA clears Starliner for normal crew rotation flights to the house station. However after software program setbacks, parachute issues, and former issues with its propulsion system, Boeing’s Starliner program is operating greater than 4 years behind SpaceX’s Dragon crew spacecraft, which flew astronauts to the station for the primary time in 2020.

And now, there is a important likelihood the Starliner crew will not come residence within the spacecraft they launched in. Bowersox, a former astronaut, mentioned NASA introduced in propulsion consultants from different packages to take a recent take a look at the thruster situation.

Engineers are nonetheless investigating the basis reason behind why 5 of Starliner’s 28 response management system thrusters, equipped by Aerojet Rocketdyne, failed throughout method to the house station the day after launch. The thrusters overheated as they pulsed over and over to fine-tune the ship’s rendezvous with the station. Assessments of the same management jet on the bottom urged a Teflon seal in an inside valve might swell at increased temperatures, limiting the move of propellant to the thruster.

4 of the 5 thrusters that failed earlier than Starliner docked on the station have recovered and generated near-normal thrust ranges throughout test-firings final month. However many engineers at NASA aren’t satisfied the thrusters will work usually on Starliner’s journey from the house station again to Earth. These management jets are wanted to maintain the spacecraft pointed in the correct route when 4 bigger rocket engines hearth for the deorbit burn to steer the capsule on a trajectory again into the environment for touchdown.

Fast pulses of the thrusters, coupled with a protracted firing of the 4 bigger engines, might increase temperatures inside 4 doghouse-shaped propulsion pods across the perimeter of Starliner’s service module. As soon as the deorbit burn is full, Starliner will jettison the service module to expend within the environment, and its crew module will use a special set of thrusters to information its reentry. Then, it can deploy parachutes to sluggish for touchdown, possible at White Sands, New Mexico.

Elevated danger

Bowersox mentioned the surface engineers introduced in from different NASA facilities have, to date, largely agreed with the assessments made by the crew working full time on Starliner.

“There are plenty of people on the market which have labored with related thrusters, and have seen related points,” he mentioned. “So we’ve gotten suggestions on what we’re seeing, and plenty of it’s confirming what we thought was inflicting the signatures that we had been observing on orbit. It’s actually robust whenever you don’t have the precise {hardware} to take a look at, when it’s up in house.”