S Starliner Can Stay In Space Beyond 45-day Limit, NASA Says
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NASA, Boeing Say Starliner And Astronauts To Continue Extended ISS StayBoeing's leaky Starliner space capsule is poised to hang out at the International Space Station even longer, NASA told reporters Friday.
The troubled vehicle is one of two that the agency selected through its Commercial Crew program to ferry astronauts to space. While the other vehicle NASA selected, the SpaceX Crew Dragon , has already completed several missions transporting astronauts to the ISS and back, Starliner's history has been full of false starts .
During the current mission, which was the first to see Starliner carrying humans, issues emerged with the vehicle thrusters and a helium leak . Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were meant to stay at the ISS for just over a week before riding Starliner back home, but now appear slated to extend that stay beyond a fourth week, if not much longer.
Boeing's Starliner capsule is performing well enough on its first-ever astronaut mission that it will likely be able to stay in orbit beyond the initially envisioned 45-day limit, NASA says.
Starliner , which launched on June 5, is docked at the International Space Station (ISS) on an indefinite mission extension. The spacecraft is in good shape and rated to leave the ISS in case of emergency. But both NASA and Boeing are trying to understand why some of Starliner's reaction control system (RCS) thrusters experienced issues in the leadup to docking with the ISS on June 6, and why several helium leaks have sprung up in the capsule. As such, Starliner will stay in space until at least later in the summer as testing and analyses continue. For example, a new round of thruster tests on the ground will begin soon, perhaps as early as today (July 2).
Testing on June 15 in orbit was unable to find the root cause of the issues, although agency officials stressed on Friday (June 28) that progress has been made : the helium leaks have stabilized , and all but one of the errant thrusters is rated for use to come back to Earth. (Starliner has 28 thrusters altogether in its RCS; five were misbehaving, and of those five, only one will be taken offline during undocking.)
Related: Thruster glitches and helium leaks can't stop Boeing's Starliner astronaut test flight ⁘ but why are they happening?
"We talked about a 45-day limit, limited by the crew module batteries on Starliner, and we're in the process of updating that limit," Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, told reporters during the Friday teleconference.
"We've been looking at those batteries and their performance on orbit. They're getting recharged by station, and that risk hasn't really changed. So the risk for the next 45 days is essentially the same as the first 45 days," he said.
When Space.com asked how long the mission could continue, Stich said, "We haven't decided how long to extend it yet." Starliner has 12 different batteries, he explained. Before this flight, similar batteries sat on the ground for a year and were then tested to make sure there were no defects, and none were found.
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