When will Starliner come home? Boeing and NASA still don’t know

The nine astronauts currently aboard the International Space Station pose for a photo. The two astronauts of Boeing’s Crew Flight test mission, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, are in the blue flight suits in the bottom row. (Image credit: NASA)

By Josh Dinner,
Published by Space.com, 11 July 2024

Engineers continue analyzing several issues that have cropped up during Starliner’s first-ever astronaut flight.

The first crewed mission of Boeing’s Starliner capsule has been in orbit for more than a month now, and it still doesn’t have a return date.

Starliner launched June 5 on Crew Flight Test (CFT), carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station (ISS) for a planned week-long stay. The capsule experienced helium leaks and thruster problems during the trip, however, and engineers are still looking into what caused them — which means Starliner hasn’t been cleared for departure yet.

“We’re taking our time on the ground to go through all the data before we decide on the return opportunity,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said during a press conference on Wednesday (July 10). 

NASA, Boeing and the two CFT astronauts still have confidence in Starliner, however. During a separate media event on Wednesday, for example, Wilmore praised the capsule’s on-orbit capabilities during operational checks. “The spacecraft performed unbelievably well,” he said.

Wilmore also discussed the issues with Starliner’s reaction control system (RCS) thrusters during its chasedown of the ISS, and how the mission dealt with them. 

“We lost an RCS jet, and then another one, and then you could tell the thrust, the control, the capability, was degraded,” he explained. “Thankfully, we had practiced, and we had gotten certified for manual control, and so we took over manual control for over an hour.” 

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