Boeing's Starliner astronauts could return on SpaceX capsule in February 2025, NASA says
WASHINGTON: NASA officials said Wednesday that the two astronauts delivered to the International Space Station in June by Boeing's Starliner may return on SpaceX's Crew Dragon in February 2025 if the Starliner is still deemed unsafe to return to Earth.
The US space agency has discussed potential plans with SpaceX to leave two seats empty on an upcoming Crew Dragon launch for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who became the first crew to fly Boeing's Starliner capsule.
The astronauts' test mission, originally expected to last about eight days on the station, has been pulled by problems with the Starliner's propulsion system that have increasingly called into question the spacecraft's ability to safely return them to Earth as planned.
A Boeing spokesperson said that if NASA decides to change Starliner's mission, the company will “take the necessary steps to configure Starliner for an unmanned return.”
Thruster failures during Starliner's first approach to the ISS in June and multiple leaks of helium — used to pressurize those thrusters — have set Boeing on a test campaign to understand the cause and propose fixes to NASA, which has the final say. The latest results have unearthed new information, causing greater alarm about a safe return.
The latest test data has sparked disagreement and debate within NASA over whether to accept the risk of a Starliner returning to Earth, or make the call to use Crew Dragon instead.
Using a SpaceX craft to return astronauts that Boeing had planned to take back to the Starliner would be a major blow to a space giant that has struggled for years to compete with SpaceX and its more experienced Crew Dragon.
The Starliner has been docked to the ISS for 63 of the maximum 90 days it can stay, and it is parked in the same port that Crew Dragon will need to use to deliver the upcoming astronaut crew.
Early Tuesday morning, NASA, using a SpaceX rocket and a Northrop Grumman capsule, delivered a routine shipment of food and supplies to the station, including extra clothing for Wilmore and Williams.
Starliner's high-effort mission is a final test required before NASA can certify the spacecraft for routine flights with astronauts to and from the ISS. Crew Dragon received NASA approval for astronaut flight in 2020.
Starliner development has been held back by management issues and numerous technical problems. It has cost Boeing $1.6 billion since 2016, including $125 million from the Starliner's current test mission, securities filings show.
TROUBLE AT NASA
A meeting this week with NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which oversees Starliner, ended with some officials disagreeing on a plan to accept Boeing's test data and use Starliner to bring the astronauts home, officials said at a press conference.
“We didn't do the survey in a way that led to a conclusion,” said Commercial Crew Program Director Steve Stich.
“We heard from a lot of people who had concerns, and the decision was not clear,” added Ken Bowersox, NASA's director of space operations.
A Boeing executive was not at Wednesday's press conference.
While no decision has been made on whether to use Starliner or Crew Dragon, NASA has bought Boeing more time to do more tests and gather more data to build a better case for trusting Starliner. Sometime next week is when NASA expects to decide, officials said.
The agency on Tuesday delayed by more than a month SpaceX's upcoming Crew Dragon mission, a routine flight called Crew-9, which is expected to send three NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut to the ISS.
NASA's ISS program manager said the agency has not yet decided which astronauts it would carry out the mission for Wilmore and Williams if needed.
Boeing's tests so far have shown that four of the Starliner's jets had failed in June because they overheated and shut down automatically, while other propellers that fired again during tests appeared weaker than normal due to some limitation of their propellant.
Ground tests in late July at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico have helped reveal that the propellers' overheating causes a Teflon seal to distort, choking the propellant tubes of the propellers and thereby weakening their thrust.
“That, I would say, raised the level of discomfort and not having a full understanding of the physics of what's going on,” Stich said, describing why NASA now seems more willing to discuss a Crew Dragon contingency after previously downplaying such opportunity to reporters.
