Boeing Starliner astronauts could return to SpaceX capsule in February 2025, NASA says
WASHINGTON: NASA officials said Wednesday that two astronauts who were transported to the International Space Station by Boeing's Starliner in June could 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 the upcoming Crew Dragon launch for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who will become the first crew to fly a Boeing Starliner capsule.
The astronauts' test mission, originally scheduled to last about eight days on the station, was dragged out by problems with the Starliner's propulsion system, which increasingly called into question the spacecraft's ability to safely return them to Earth as planned.
A Boeing spokesman said that if NASA decides to change the Starliner's mission, the company “will take the steps necessary to configure the Starliner for unmanned return.”
The failure of the thrusters during Starliner's initial approach to the ISS in June and several leaks of helium — used to pressurize the thrusters — sparked a Boeing test campaign to understand the cause and design a fix for NASA, which has the final say. Recent results have revealed new information that has raised concerns about a safe return.
The latest test data has sparked disagreement and debate within NASA over whether to take the risk of returning the Starliner to Earth or use Crew Dragon instead.
Using SpaceX's craft to return astronauts that Boeing planned to bring back to the Starliner would be a major blow to the aerospace giant, which has struggled for years to compete with SpaceX and its more experienced Crew Dragon.
The Starliner has been docked with the ISS for 63 of its maximum 90 days, and is parked in the same port that Crew Dragon will have to use to deliver the incoming astronaut crew.
Early Tuesday morning, NASA used a SpaceX rocket and a Northrop Grumman capsule to deliver a routine shipment of food and supplies, including extra clothes for Wilmore and Williams, to the station.
The high-stakes Starliner mission is the final test required before NASA can certify the spacecraft for routine astronaut flights to and from the ISS. Crew Dragon received NASA approval for astronaut flights in 2020.
Development of the Starliner was halted by management problems and numerous technical problems. It has cost Boeing $1.6 billion since 2016, including $125 million from the current Starliner test mission, securities filings show.
CONCERN AT NASA
A meeting of NASA's commercial crew program, which oversees Starliner, ended this week with some officials disagreeing with a plan to accept Boeing's test data and use Starliner to carry astronauts home, officials said during a news conference.
“We didn't ask in a conclusive way,” said commercial crew program chief Steve Stich.
“We heard from a lot of people who had concerns, and the decision was not clear,” added Ken Bowersox, NASA's chief of space operations.
A Boeing executive was not at Wednesday's news conference.
While no decision has been made on whether to use the Starliner or Crew Dragon, NASA has been buying Boeing more time to do more testing and gather more data to make a better case for trusting the Starliner. Sometime next week, NASA expects to make a decision, officials said.
The agency on Tuesday delayed by more than a month SpaceX's upcoming Crew Dragon mission, a routine flight called Crew-9 that would have sent three NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut to the ISS.
The head of NASA's ISS program said the agency had not yet decided which astronauts would carry Wilmore and Williams, if needed.
Boeing's tests so far have shown that four of the Starliner's jets failed in June because they overheated and shut down automatically, while other jets restarted during the tests appeared weaker than normal due to some limitation in their propellant.
Ground tests in late July at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico helped reveal that overheating the nozzles was causing the Teflon gaskets that choke the jets' propellant tubes to deform, weakening their thrust.
“I would say it raised the level of discomfort and not fully understanding the physics of what was going on,” Stich said, describing why NASA now seems more willing to discuss the Crew Dragon contingency after previously downplaying such a prospect to reporters.
