Houston, Boeing has a problem

Issues with Starliner spacecraft may open door for rival SpaceX to come to the rescue

- RICHARD TRIBOU

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, docked to the International Space Station as it orbits above Egypt's Mediterranean coast, has problems with its thrusters and helium leaks.

No decision has been made yet, but NASA last week detailed an option to get Boeing’s Starliner astronauts home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon if needed.

NASA’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams arrived on Starliner on June 6 a day after launching from Cape Canaveral on the Crew Flight Test mission for what was supposed to be about an eight-day stay on board the International Space Station. Now the trip home won’t occur until next month at the earliest and seems likely to come courtesy of Boeing’s rival, Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Issues with thrusters and helium leaks on Starliner’s propulsion module, though, led Boeing and NASA to try and figure out if it would be safe enough to fly home with humans on board, going through a series of ground tests and on-station hot fires, but the exact problem has yet to be nailed down.

“When we started this mission, it was a test mission. We knew that it potentially had a higher risk than a flight on a vehicle that has more experience, more flights on it,” said NASA’s Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of the Space Operations Mission Directorate, on Wednesday. “So we’re at the point now where we see additional risk that’s in a fairly broad uncertainty band. Depending on how much data and how much understanding you have, you might take a different view of where we are in that risk band.”

Bowersox did say “our chances of an uncrewed Starliner return has increased a little bit based on where things have gone over the last week or two and that’s why we’re looking more closely at that option to make sure that we can handle it.”

But new data or new analysis could make it shift back, he said.