NASA decided on Aug. 24 that it was too risky to have astronauts return to Earth in the Boeing vehicle, due to ongoing problems with the capsule’s thrusters — tiny engines the spacecraft uses to maneuver through space. Friday’s return of an empty craft will renew debate over whether Starliner is safe to move forward as a crew capsule for NASA.
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A key factor in NASA’s decision was that engineers weren’t fully confident how the thrusters might behave when Starliner needed to ignite them to maneuver out of orbit. Despite that, NASA officials said they’re optimistic that Starliner will return to Earth safely.
“We have confidence in the vehicle,” Steve Stich, a NASA official overseeing the flight, said during a press conference on Wednesday. “We have confidence that the de-orbit burn will be executed. And we’ve had two good landings with Starliner so far, and we’re expecting another one.”
When Starliner docked with the space station June 6, it experienced a number of helium leaks, and a handful of the capsule’s thrusters failed and had to be rebooted. NASA and Boeing spent months doing analysis and conducting tests to determine why the issues occurred, but have yet to fully understand the root cause. Stich described the final meeting to decide on the return strategy as a “tense technical discussion.”
During Starliner’s return, NASA officials will be looking closely at how the thrusters perform to see if they have diminished capability throughout the trip. Engineers plan to conduct some test firings of the thrusters once Starliner undocks to see how they behave. Starliner will also follow a trajectory away from the station that puts “less stress” on the thrusters overall, NASA officials said.
Wilmore and Williams were the first astronauts to fly on Starliner as part of a critical test flight to verify that the capsule was safe to perform regular crewed trips to and from the International Space Station. It’s unclear how NASA plans to proceed with Starliner following the landing, though a successful return would be a much-needed win for the Boeing program.
“We have options for how we move forward,” Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator of space operations, said during a press conference last month. “We plan to work together with Boeing to find that path.”
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