On June 5th, 2024, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams boarded the Boeing Starliner vehicle and launched into space. They are the first crew to use this new spaceship, and the plan was to dock with the International Space Station, then return to earth after about two weeks.
It has now been over two months, and the crew is still stranded on the ISS, with no set plans on how to get them home.
When getting ready to dock with the ISS, some helium leaks were detected on the Starliner, but it wasn’t bad enough to prevent the docking. After the docking was secured, additional leaks were found.
Boeing was attempting to diagnose the problem on a backup thruster back on Earth. Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said in an update about a month into this ordeal:
“We collected an incredible amount of data on the thruster that could help us better understand what is going on in flight. Next, our team has moved into engine tear downs and inspections which will provide additional insight as we analyze the results and evaluate next steps.”
They believe that the helium leaks are causing the Starliner’s engine thrusters to overheat. This, of course, would impact the spacecraft’s ability to safely bring the crew home. Stich explained:
“What we have found in this flight is we have fired the thrusters more than expected, and I would say more frequently. When I say frequently, I’m talking about how close you fire an individual thruster pulse to the next pulse of that thruster. What we’re trying to do at White Sands is really replicating exactly what those pulses were that those thrusters saw, and then understand the heating effects from those pulses, and then make sure there’s no unintended consequences of those pulses.”
In early August , NASA has confirmed that they have reached out to SpaceX asking them to come up with a way to bring the astronauts home if they are unable to safely use the Starliner craft.
SpaceX has sent many missions to the International Space Station in the past, and would undoubtedly be able to do it again in this case. While no firm plans have been made, it appears that if NASA chooses to use SpaceX for this mission, the private space company would simply launch their next mission using their Crew Dragon spaceship with two empty seats. Then, when the mission was over, they would bring Wilmore and Williams home as part of the Crew Dragon.
While this sounds like a good idea, NASA has already postponed the next SpaceX mission until September 24th. If that mission continued as planned, it would not return to Earth until February of 2025, meaning Wilmore and Williams two week mission would extend out 8 months.
If it is decided that the Starliner cannot be used to bring the astronauts home, the craft would be disengaged from the ISS and it would fly itself back to Earth, splashing down in the ocean where it can hopefully be recovered and analyzed further.
This whole ordeal sounds like a modern ‘Gilligan’s Island’ introduction, hopefully these astronauts are better trained.
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