With their stay on the International Space Station (ISS) extended, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams shared their views on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft during a media talk given earlier today. Wilmore and Williams took off on ULA's Atlas V rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida early last month, and their mission has been extended as NASA and Boeing are evaluating Starliner's performance after troubles with its thrusters and seals. During their talk, the astronauts were praised for Starliner's performance and stressed that Starliner can return to Earth anytime.
Boeing's Starliner Praised By NASA Astronaut For Handling Capabilities
Right off the bat, the astronauts started their conference by commenting on Starliner's performance during its journey to the space station. After Starliner had separated from Atlas V, the astronauts started the ship's operational checks. During this time, Starliner's performance was perfect, shared Wilmore. On the Cooper-Harper rating scale, which evaluates a ship's handling, the astronaut was "tempted" to give the ship a score of ten because of the "precision that this spacecraft held."
Moving into the second day, as Starliner's thrusters started to develop problems, the crew had to control the spacecraft manually. During this time, the ship's "capability was degraded," outlined Wilmore, while the "handling qualities were not the same." However, despite the low power, performance was "still impressive," believes the astronaut. As an example, he shared that when docking to the station, Starliner has a margin of "five degrees in attitude and about four inches in position". However, the ship "came right down in automatic mode at this point, and right down the middle even with the degraded thrusters."
Williams added that after docking with the station, the crew practiced with Starliner as a safe haven in case of an emergency on the space station. Other tests involved evaluating the ship's habitability to ensure that the ship could support four people. These included evaluating Starliner's environmental control systems, and the ship "worked really well," according to the astronaut.
Later in the day, NASA and Boeing officials shared more details about Starliner's return. NASA's Steve Stich outlined that teams are currently testing thrusters on Earth to understand the faults in these systems during Starliner's approach to the ISS. Starliner can return to Earth before SpaceX's Crew 9 mission takes off, but NASA and Boeing will decide on a timeline after the ground tests are complete.
Starliner is a "go to return in an emergency, if, if the crew needed to return in any point in time," shared Stich, and NASA will conduct a standard review for return before it proceeds with any such mission. Boeing's Mark Nappi shared that the anomaly items that his firm had identified are "being worked off" with all items "scheduled to be completed by the end of next week." NASA's ground thruster tests suggest that a return could optimistically be "by the end of July," shared Stich, with the major driver being"the handover we have coming up between Crew 8 and Crew 9," which is currently slated for mid August.
About the author: Ramish is a seasoned technology writer and editor with more than a decade of experience. He specializes in semiconductor fabrication and market analysis. With a background in finance and supply chain management - via his bachelors in Finance and a micromasters in supply chain management from MIT - Ramish combines financial rigor with deep industry insight to deliver accurate and authoritative coverage.
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