NASA and Boeing Extend Starliner's Mission

When Starliner docked at the ISS on last Thursday, June 6, they expected to spend a week there, departing on June 13. NASA and Boeing have joined in extending their mission to NET (No Earlier Than) next Tuesday, June 18th.

"...The additional time in orbit will allow the crew to perform a spacewalk on Thursday, June 13, while engineers complete #Starliner systems checkouts," NASA ISS officials said on Sunday (June 9) via X.

It took a long time for Starliner to get to this mission, with two unmanned missions instead of one and then numerous problems with the spacecraft that had to be addressed before it was deemed ready to fly. The mission has not been problem-free, with additional small helium leaks and a few misbehaving thrusters, such that the first attempt to dock failed and it took an additional hour or so before they successfully docked at the ISS. Mission planners and crew consider these problems to be minor, and say they've been dealt with successfully so far. 

Among their first tasks after coming aboard the station was to bring a new urine processing pump for a replacement, NASA officials said. The urine processor was a late addition to Starliner's cargo manifest after the unit on the space station failed earlier this month.

If all goes well, Starliner will be certified to fly six-month astronaut missions to and from the ISS for NASA, as SpaceX currently does with Crew Dragon. The majority of the crew on the station is the Crew 8 mission, launched by SpaceX in March. 

The seven Expedition 71 crew members gather with the two Crew Flight Test members for a team portrait aboard the space station. In the front from left are, Suni Williams, Oleg Kononenko, and Butch Wilmore. Second row from left are, Alexander Grebenkin, Tracy C. Dyson, and Mike Barratt. In the back are, Nikolai Chub, Jeanette Epps, and Matthew Dominick. Credit: NASA TV