Two Nasa astronauts on Boeing’s Starliner capsule will remain at the International Space Station with no official return date yet, Nasa and Boeing officials said Thursday morning as engineers continue to investigate the technical problems with the spacecraft.
Test pilots Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams first departed for the station about seven weeks ago, early June, on a test mission that was intended to last about a week. But the capsule’s disengagement was delayed due to faulty thrusters and small helium leaks which raised safety concerns.
Last month, a spokesman for Boeing said the helium leaks and most of the thrust problems were “all stable and not a concern for the return mission”.
“Four of the five thrusters that shut down before are now working normally. This means only one drive out of 27 is currently offline. This does not present an issue for the return mission,” the spokesperson said at the time.
Nasa and Boeing officials said that the astronauts were not stranded and that the technical problems did not threaten the mission.
Earlier this month, NASA announced it was still conducting tests to ensure the capsule would perform as expected, and said that while they were confident the craft would be safe for an emergency evacuation, mission managers were not yet ready for its departure do not schedule.
Nasa and Boeing officials said Thursday that they were not ready to announce a return date, and that the pilots would remain at the space station until engineers finished working on and investigating the issues with the capsule.
“We’ll come home when we’re ready,” Steve Stich, Nasa’s commercial crew program manager, said in the press conference. the Associated Press. He also acknowledged that backup options were being reviewed, including using other capsules to get the astronauts home safely, which he said was a top priority.
Engineers recently completed tests on an extra thruster in the New Mexico desert, according to Nasa, which will be further investigated in an attempt to understand what went wrong. According to AP, officials say that the issues appears to be caused by degraded sealsalthough more analysis is needed.
This is not the first time the Starliner mission, which is the first time the spacecraft has carried a crew into space, has faced technical problems. This Nasa-Boeing mission also faced problems before its launch, including problems with reaction control thrusters and helium leaks, which delayed his departure.
