Washington: NASA officials may reach a definite decision as early as Saturday on whether they have approved Boeing’s troubled Starliner can return to Earth with its flight crew Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams on board, or whether the spacecraft will be brought back to Earth unmanned and by remote control, the US space agency announced in an official blog.
“NASA’s decision on whether to return Starliner to Earth with astronauts aboard is expected no earlier than Saturday, August 24 at the conclusion of an agency-level review chaired by Ken Bowersox, the associate administrator of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate,” the release said on Thursday.
The agency flight readiness review is where any formal dissents are presented and reconciled, NASA said.
“Other agency leaders who routinely participate in launch and return readiness reviews for crewed missions include NASA’s administrator, deputy administrator, associate administrator, various agency center directors, the Flight Operations Directorate, and agency technical authorities,” the blog said.
NASA officials have already said Wilmore and Williams may stay on the International Space Station for another six months, making their stay nine months in all on what was due to have only been a visit of a few days before the Starliner developed five helium leaks and failures of five of its 28 maneuvering thrusters.
NASA will host a televised news conference following the review’s conclusion to discuss the agency’s decision and next steps. More information on the news conference will be shared once confirmed. After the agency-level decision, program and flight control teams will continue preparing for Starliner’s return, including training sessions and other actions as appropriate.
Ahead of the agency-level review, NASA and Boeing are working to finalize and present flight rationale to various teams across the community and to the program control board. Engineering teams have been working to evaluate a new model that represents the thruster mechanics and is designed to more accurately predict performance during the return phase of flight. This data could help teams better understand system redundancy from undock to service module separation. Ongoing efforts to complete the new modeling, characterize spacecraft performance data, refine integrated risk assessments, and determine community recommendations will fold into the agency-level review.
Starliner was launched with its two-astronaut crew on June 5 but five of its 28 thrusters failed at different times during its flight to the ISS and five helium leaks were also recorded. The spacecraft’s return flight was originally scheduled for June 14 but has been repeatedly delayed since then while engineers back on Earth tried to solve the problems, NASA officials have acknowledged.
