NASA wants you to know that Starliner is feeling much better and is now fine.
Probably.
They just need to do some more tests to find out just how "fine" it is. And besides, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are not stranded.
They're perfectly safe. NASA and Boeing pushed back on Friday against the
rumors you see everywhere to make all that clear.
Batteries on this Starliner spacecraft were initially only certified for a
45-day mission duration, but NASA officials said they are looking at
extending the limit after confirming the batteries are functioning well.
“We have the luxury of time," said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for
NASA's space operations mission directorate. “We’re still in the middle
of a test mission. We’re still pressing forward."
What's beyond questioning is that Starliner Crewed Flight Test, CFT-1, was
intended to stay on the ISS around eight days, which would have been until
around Friday, June 14, but that was delayed within three days of its arrival at the station,
on June 9, three weeks ago. About two weeks after that, we started
hearing that "yes, but" story that Starliner was only cleared for a 45 day
mission to the ISS. If we start on the launch day, 45 days is until July 21, a
Sunday. Now NASA says they're looking at extending the limit beyond 45 days
(although they didn't offer another number) after they confirm the batteries can make it.
Steve Stich, manager of NASA's commercial crew program, said Friday that he
wanted to clear up "misunderstandings" that led to headlines claiming the
Starliner spacecraft was stuck or stranded at the space station.
“I want to make it very clear that Butch and Suni are not stranded in
space," Stich said. "Our plan is to continue to return them on Starliner and return them home
at the right time. We have a little bit more work to do to get there for the final return,
but they're safe on (the) space station." [Bold added: SiG]
Both NASA and Boeing wanted to emphasize that they're are not even talking
about using anything other than the immediately available vehicles. In
addition to Starliner, SpaceX's Crew Dragon and Russia's Soyuz are docked to
the ISS.
"Obviously, we have the luxury of having multiple vehicles, and we work
contingency plans for lots of different cases, but right now, we’re really
focused on returning Butch and Suni on Starliner," Stich said.
"We're not stuck on the ISS," said Mark Nappi, Boeing's vice president in
charge of the Starliner program. "It's pretty painful to read the things
that are out there. We've gotten a really good test flight that's been
accomplished so far, and it's being viewed rather negatively.”
Stich said NASA officials should have "more frequent interaction" with
reporters to fill in gaps of information on the Starliner test flight.
NASA's written updates are not always timely, and often lack details and
context.
They said NASA has already cleared Starliner for an emergency return to Earth
if astronauts need to evacuate the space station for safety - as almost happened when
that Russian satellite exploded last Wednesday (6/26) - or for medical reasons.
But NASA hasn't yet approved Starliner for reentry and landing under "nominal"
conditions.
As you might imagine, a large part of the concern is the thruster issue.
The purpose of the the next few weeks delay is to give engineers time to test
a Starliner thruster on the ground. During the approach to dock at the ISS,
Starliner's control software said five of Starliner's 28 reaction control
system thrusters were unusable. Several days later, during a test while
docked, four of those five were cleared for use, but there's a really big
"but" hanging there. They can't be certain the thrusters fired at full
thrust because of limitations while docked at the space station.
So engineers will take an identical thruster on the ground and test-fire it
at a NASA facility in New Mexico. The test will simulate the exact sequence
of firings Starliner's thrusters performed as it approached the space
station and the firing sequence engineers expect when Starliner undocks and
returns to Earth.
The test will take a couple of weeks, then engineers will inspect the
thruster. "The test will help us understand the thruster performance," Stich
said. "It may give us 100 percent confidence that everything we’ve seen on
orbit is fine. It’s just one more piece of data that we can have before we
actually de-orbit the vehicle.”
At the end of the mission, Starliner's service module will detach before
reentry and burn up, while the crew module parachutes to an airbag-cushioned
landing, likely at White Sands, New Mexico. Officials are eager to gather as
much data on thruster performance as possible in flight because they won't
have an opportunity to inspect the service module after landing.
Then there's the matter I had forgotten about, that the second unmanned flight
test in May of '22 also had thruster issues, and they thought software fixes
would take care of the problems. Either they totally misunderstood what was
really happening and did an incorrect fix or this is a new and different problem. It argues for
these tests they're planning to do. There really is no good way to test some
aspects of hardware behavior on orbit other than testing it on orbit.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams at the docking port entry to the ISS.
Image credit: NASA