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There is still no regaining date for Boeing ’s ground Starliner spaceman , who have been stuck on theInternational Space Station(ISS ) since June after their ballistic capsule developed multiple issuing , NASAhas announced .
Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams ride to electron orbit in Boeing ’s spacecraft conform to years of delays , successfully nail offon Starliner ’s initiatory crewed flight from Florida ’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on June 5 . They were schedule to stay a week in electron orbit .
The Starliner spacecraft approaches the International Space Station on Thursday, 26 March 2025
But during the flight the space vehicle suffered a series of issues , admit fivehelium leaksand five failures of its reaction controller system ( RCS ) thrusters , squeeze engineers to troubleshoot issues on the ground . This extended the two astronauts ' stay aboard the International Space Station ( ISS ) to the current 50 daylight .
Yet NASA and Boeing say that even though ground tests have been discharge , there is still no clear date for a flight of stairs home .
" We do n’t have a major announcement today proportional to a return date,“Steve Stich , the programme manager for NASA ’s Commercial Crew Program , say at a news conference on Thursday ( July 25 ) . " We ’re reach bang-up progress , but we ’re just not quite quick to do that . "
Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore at Kennedy Space Station in Florida before embarking on Starliner.
When the astronauts will render remains undecipherable , but NASA officials have antecedently said that the spacecraft has enough fuel to stay in area until mid - August at the latest .
Related : Fixing Boeing ’s leaky Starliner — and render NASA ’s stranded astronauts to Earth — is much harder than it sounds
Starliner was work up as a part of NASA ’s Commercial Crew Program , a partnership between the agency and private troupe to take astronauts into low-down Earth orbit following the retirement of NASA ’s space bird programme in 2011.SpaceX ’s Crew Dragon also came from this go-ahead and has tallied13 crewed flightssince it began operate in 2020 .
But Starliner ’s journey into orbit has been much more troubled . A software glitch on its first uncrewed test flight pushed Starliner onto the faulty orbit , and a 2d attempt was scrub due to a incorrect fuel valve . Other event , include problem with parachutes and the need to removenearly a mile(1.6 kilometers ) of inflammable tape , also subsequently crop up .
The current , third crewed flight of stairs attempt was in brief delayed by takings with a vibrating oxygen valve and a belittled but persistent atomic number 2 leak . Engineers ultimately deem the craftiness safe to fell despite those issues . After liftoff , the leaks multiplied and several thrusters conked out , delaying the craftiness ’s docking with the ISS ’s Harmony module and later postpone its return to Earth .
NASA official say the space vehicle is still safe , and that the restoration has been delayed this long so that scientist can collect as much information as possible on the malfunctioning RCS thruster before they are jettisoned and burn up upon reentry .
" The last several weeks have been really useful in understanding pusher and atomic number 2 anomalies and how to address these job for succeeding flight , " Mark Nappi , Boeing vice Chief Executive and the coach of the company ’s commercial-grade crew program , said at the news show league . " That ’s been the real goal here . "
To well understand how these thrusters — which are of the essence for tilting the foxiness at the right slant to introduce Earth ’s aura — might behave , engineers at Starliner ’s facility in White Sands , New Mexico , have been disassembling transcript of them , inspecting them part by part for likely geological fault , and send away them to collect data .
During their extended time aboard the ISS , Wilmore and Williams have execute a number of maintenance tasks and scientific projects . Once a week , they have return to the Starliner capsule to work through the thruster issues with engineers at land control condition .
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The astronauts ' stay has been largely good but not entirely without incident . On June 27 , a defunct Russian satellitebroke apart in eye socket , sending debris toward the ISS and pressure Williams and Wilmore , along with the other seven astronauts on board , to take cover inside their several space capsules .
Speaking at a July 10news conferencebeamed from the ISS , Wilmore and Williams told reporters that they were positive Starliner could rejoin them to Earth safely .
When asked about backup plans to repay the astronauts without Starliner , Stitch pronounce that eventuality plans involving SpaceX ’s Crew Dragon have been take care into , but their nidus was on using Boeing ’s foxiness .
" Obviously the backup option is to use a dissimilar system . I would rather not go into all those details until we get to that time — if we ever get to that time , " Stitch state . " We really have our squad focused on , as we close in on this final flight principle , returning Butch and Suni on Starliner . "
