The first Boeing Starliner to carry astronauts to space completed a crucial test in space on Saturday (July 27), as the next mission faces a months-long delay.
Engineers tested StarlinerNASA’s Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters are preparing for a broader agency review that will assess the spacecraft’s readiness for landing NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams in August, if all goes as planned.
“Teams will evaluate the test firing results over the next several days as they work on overall studies in preparation for an agency readiness review,” NASA officials said. wrote in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday.
Starliner encountered problems during the first docking of astronauts with the International Space Station (ISS) on June 6. Although it eventually successfully launched, helium leaks and problems with five thrusters delayed the event. Starliner is designed to leave the ISS in an emergency, but before astronauts attempt a nominal departure, engineers are trying to figure out why these problems occurred.
Understanding what happened is critical to preparing for the next mission, Starliner-1, which is scheduled to spend six months on the ISS in 2025. On Friday (July 28), NASA announced a delay of that mission to August 2025, beyond an initial expectation of early winter.
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NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, dressed in Boeing spacesuits, smile as they prepare to depart the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Control Building for Launch Complex 41 to board the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft for the crew flight test launch to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Kennedy Space Center in Florida, June 1, 2024. (Photo credit: MIGUEL J. RODRIGUEZ CARRILLO/AFP via Getty Images)
NASA and Boeing have not yet determined how they will fix Starliner’s problems, whether through design or by changing how future astronauts fire the thrusters, officials told reporters Thursday (July 27). But in the meantime, Starliner-1 will delay its launch to give “a little more time for Starliner to complete the modifications that come from the new tests,” NASA’s Steve Stich told reporters. Stich is the manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
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Starliner’s current space mission, known as the Crew Flight Test (CFT), was originally scheduled to last 10 days. It has now reached nearly 55 days in space, with the astronauts living off a supply reserve on the ISS that is already there for contingencies. The mission is in the development phase, and as a result, the schedule was uncertain, NASA and Boeing said ahead of the mission.
a cone-shaped spaceship with an open hatch, flying in space
Boeing’s Starliner capsule approaches the International Space Station for docking on June 6, 2024. (Image credit: NASA TV)
In a blog post, Boeing officials said the new RCS test was conducted to “confirm the performance of each thruster” with short bursts, each lasting no more than 1.2 seconds. (The RCS has 28 thrusters, but engineers removed one thruster from testing a few weeks ago because they felt it couldn’t properly ignite for the return to Earth.) Each thruster tested showed maximum thrust ranging from 97 to 102 percent.
“The helium system also remained stable,” Boeing officials wrote. Wilmore and Williams did not directly fire the thrusters, but remained aboard the Starliner and reported what they saw to the ground. (Both former U.S. Navy test pilots have years of experience in developmental aerospace programs.)
Ground tests of a thruster this month revealed why CFT’s RCS has problems: If fired repeatedly, especially in conjunction with the Orbital Maneuvering and Control System (OMAC) thrusters, the “doghouses” or isolated bays housing RCS thruster clusters tend to heat up, causing thrusters losing Teflon insulation of their seals. NASA and Boeing also said that this problem could not have been discovered on the ground, before the CFT flight.
Starliner is one of two NASA-funded systems to send astronauts to the ISS. The other is Crew Dragon, built by SpaceX. Crew Dragon conducted its first crewed test in 2020, using a design based on SpaceX’s ISS Cargo Dragon vehicle. After the test, Crew Dragon flew 11 missions to the ISS: eight six-month missions for NASA and three week-long missions for Axiom Space.
Crew-9, SpaceX’s ninth operational mission to the ISS, is scheduled to launch no earlier than Aug. 18, and Starliner is expected to be back home by then, NASA said.
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