When two veteran NASA astronauts blasted off from Earth on June 5 for the International Space Station (ISS), they expected to head home in a week or so.
It’s now been three weeks and counting for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, as NASA and Boeing troubleshoot equipment problems.
Three potential landing dates have so far been called off, and their flight home is now on hold.
The astronauts are on a test drive of Boeing’s new capsule, which was built to ferry astronauts to and from the station, and foreshadows commercial journeys to the ISS.
This week, Boeing said the Starliner capsule’s problems aren’t a concern for the return trip, and “the astronauts are not stranded”.
The long-delayed test flight is the first with astronauts aboard. Boeing will eventually join SpaceX in ferrying crews to and from the space station for NASA.
Why was Starliner’s return trip postponed?
NASA says it wants more time to analyse problems in the spacecraft’s propulsion system, which is used to manoeuvre in flight.
The propulsion system is attached to the capsule, but it doesn’t come back to Earth — instead, it is ditched during re-entry and burns up in the atmosphere.
“We’re just taking a little more extra time to review all the data and also learn as much as we can while we have this service module in orbit,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager.
The space agency also said it didn’t want the capsule’s departure to conflict with spacewalks. This week’s spacewalk was called off after water leaked from an astronaut’s spacesuit while she was still inside the orbiting laboratory.
