Starliner is NOT "Stranded in Space"

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