The US astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore are spending more time on the ISS caused by continuous issues with a Boeing Starliner capsule. Osun and I had intended to go back to school in mid-June after the mission which was planned for one week.
If there were any issues then it would have to be with the Starliner Capsule The problems faced by Starliner on this mission are briefly described in the subsequent sub-section.
Starliner capsule had its fair share of troubles with things such as failed thrusters and leakages in the helium gas. These problems have forced both NASA and Boeing to delay the astronauts’ homecoming as far as is presently possible. However, as much as many investigations and tests continue to be carried out, a definite date for their return has not been given.
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The Return Date Has Not Been Determined Yet, But Options Have Been Made
Now, Steve Stich, the commercial crew program manager at NASA has provided some discouraging words saying that the managers are still not ready to declare the date they will be returning. “We will return home only when we want to,” Stich said to AP, this demonstrated NASA’s peace and safety. He also explained that as always, NASA rarely operates without a backup plan, and in this case, it was considering SpaceX’s dragon capsule as a backup.
The primary theme of Perils and Problems includes safety concerns and technical troubles
Engineers are looking into one of the spare thrusters to try and understand why the thrusters have been failing. They think that worn-out seals could be the cause of the Helium leaks that Science had reported as well as the thruster problems. To gather additional data the Starliner’s thrusters will be fired while the capsule stays at the space station during the weekend.
There emerging indications that NASA and Boeing had prior knowledge of a helium leak in the spacecraft that was deployed on June, 5. Though, there were signs of this problem to the management it was not considered to be a safety concern that warranted the cancellation of the launch. Nevertheless, the official added that upon reaching the orbit in 25 flight hours, the new Starliner faced four more Helium leaks that left one of the thrusters useless.
Extended Stay and Its Implication
Unforeseen circumstances have hampered the schedule and the timeline under which two astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore are expected to return. Their scheduled return to the ISS was planned for June 13, then changed to June 26 however both dates had to be scrubbed, Byington noted. Extended stay at the International Space Station is certainly a concerning issue for Boeing’s commercial crew program.
Background and Comparative Analysis with SpaceX
This situation is not the first time the Starliner has run into trouble. The capsule has a history of issues during previous test flights, for instance, a failed mission to the space station in 2019 resulting from software issues. Such shortcomings have come up multiple times, and as a part of NASA’s commercial crew program, one cannot be assured of the Starliner’s performance.
Whereas, SpaceX successfully delivered astronauts to and from the space station from the year 2020. The carrier rocket being developed by SpaceX to transport astronauts is obtaining a reputation of reliability for now, the bad happenings have happened to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets where an upper stage failure could cause issues to future crewed missions.
Looking Ahead
This only shows the woes that Boeing has been experiencing in its process of trying to fix the technical problems that the Starliner has. The engineers are tirelessly, so to say, struggling with these difficulties, trying to discover and sort them out for the sake of astronauts’ lives. The investigations that are still underway, and the prospective test firings are significant processes for initiating the next action.
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