NASA will talk about the delayed return to Earth of Boeing’s Starliner capsule at a press conference today (June 18), and you can listen to it live.
Representatives from NASA and Boeing will discuss progress Starliner‘s mission at the International Space Station (ISS), which docked on June 6 after several helium leaks and problems with five on-board reaction control system (RCS) engines. The press conference starts at 12:00 PM EDT (5:00 PM GMT) and you can listen to it live here on Space.com, via NASA Television.
Starliner’s first docking attempt was rejected due to problems with the RCS bow thruster, but the rendezvous was successfully accomplished on the second attempt a few hours later on 6 June. Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have since tested the thrusters to evaluate the problems and the spacecraft’s performance.
Starliner was expected to spend about a week on the ISS, but NASA and Boeing have extended the capsule’s orbital stay until at least June 22. During the extended mission, “the crew will perform additional hatch operations to better understand its operation, and repeat some ‘safe harbor’ testing and pilot assessment using the forward window,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, in a recent statement from the agency.
Related: Thruster failures and helium leaks can’t stop Boeing’s Starliner astronaut test flight – but why are they happening?
Starliner and SpaceX’s Dragon capsules are the two private vehicles NASA has chosen to transport astronauts to and from the ISS. (The venerable Russian spacecraft Soyuz also provides this service, during cosmonaut-led missions.) Starliner is currently on a test mission, known as Crew Flight Test (CFT), with the goal of certifying the capsule before the first operational mission, called Starliner-1. , which is expected in 2025.
CFT has the flexibility to stay for months if necessary. The crew and NASA have repeatedly said that safety is always more important than previously mentioned timelines for launch, docking, landing or other mission events.
Both Starliner and Dragon were funded by NASA in 2014 for expected missions no earlier than 2017, although technical and funding issues delayed that timeline by years. SpaceX, which based its design on its own robotic ISS cargo spacecraft, sent its first crewed Dragon mission to space in 2020 after a single uncrewed test flight to the orbiting laboratory.
Starliner, a new spacecraft design, required much more work. The December 2019 unmanned test mission did not reach the ISS as planned after computer glitches left Starliner stranded in the wrong orbit. The next unmanned mission did not launch until 2022, after problems with the first flight were resolved and the coronavirus pandemic broke out. While that second mission went according to plan, new problems with flammable tape and parachute loading delayed the CFT until 2024.
CFT’s launch was scheduled for May 6, but that day’s attempt was scrapped just two hours before launch due to a valve problem on the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.
NASA and Boeing subsequently discovered a small helium leak on Starliner that affected one of its thrusters, requiring lengthy evaluation. Team members also subsequently identified a design issue that could potentially impact reentry, requiring certification of a new method of reentry Soil, which the astronauts tested on the ground before leaving home. The mission finally launched on June 5, on its third attempt on launch day.