This morning we got another Starliner update in the form of a teleconference with NASA and Boeing officials. The last one was almost two weeks ago meaning teams had a decent amount of time to continue testing, look at the vehicle, and determine what exactly was going wrong with the spacecraft.
Even still, no official return date has been set and instead, they mentioned that an optimistic reentry date would be around late July. Combine this with crew rotations expected in the middle of August and Starliner might stay at the station quite a bit longer. Here I will go more in-depth into this newest update, the state of Starliner, current test results, and more.
Still Testing
For over a month now Starliner has been docked to the space station as teams work to figure out what caused a few different issues. For context, a helium leak was discovered before the launch but it was determined to be insignificant so they launched with it as is. A few more helium leaks popped up not long after the launch along with multiple thruster failures that delayed the initial docking sequence. The mission was originally expected to last around a week however these problems changed that plan. Over the last month teams at NASA and Boeing have been trying to figure out primarily what caused the thruster issues. This is for two main reasons, for one, the problems are with equipment within the spacecraft’s service module which will burn up upon reentry. This means the only time to get data on this specific hardware is before it leaves the station. The other reason is to ensure the vehicle is safe to undock and bring both Butch and Suni home.
During the last update late last month, they mentioned that teams would conduct additional ground testing at the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico to better understand the spacecraft’s thruster performance. This testing was intended to expose Starliner’s thrusters to flight-like pulse counts and thermal conditions for ground teams to inspect and analyze. In theory, the data collected would also help determine system improvements for future post-certification missions to the station. Since that update, the testing has begun and we heard much more about what its revealed in this morning’s teleconference.
Steve Stich, the NASA commercial crew program manager was quoted saying, “We’re taking our time on the ground to go through all the data that we have before we decide on the return opportunity. Were taking time to build confidence in the spacecraft to understand the thruster performance. Those aft thrusters that failed off during docking and also totally understand the helium margins before we undock. You know what we’re doing is not unusual for a new spacecraft.”
He went on to say, “Since we last talked at the white sands test facility, we have started the ground hot fire testing that we talked about. We put the thruster in the chamber on July 3rd and actually did an acceptance test with that thruster just to verify that that thruster is healthy before we put it through the performance that we needed to understand the flight performance of that particular thruster” he said.
In other words, they have been trying to replicate what they saw the thrusters do on the initial part of the mission and near the docking sequence. Unfortunately, they haven’t quite been able to match a few of the metrics. In regard to this Stich went on to mention, “The temperatures we’ve been able to achieve are not quite what we would’ve hoped for, based on the flight data we know in what’s called the injector which is where the propellants mix what the temperatures were so we’re probably a little on the low side. The teams are off looking at that data and trying to determine the next steps. And then the idea is to take that thruster and put it through the downhill phase of the flight and the most trusting part for the aft thrusters” he said.
When he mentions the downhill phase he’s referring to the undocking sequence and the following mission objectives before the service module is eventually detached from the capsule. Importantly, and a big part of why no return date has been set, is that the thrusters that have experienced a few issues up to this point, are used to help with the orientation of the deorbit and reentry sequence.
In terms of the helium leaks, Stich said, “On the helium leak we hope to bring that in to the Starliner mission management team for final resolution later this week. The team has been working very hard to try and understand that story, to double and triple-check the margins related to the rest of the flight. And then a lot of testing has happened at the Marshall Space Flight Center.”
He also reiterated “Starliner is go to return in an emergency. If the crew needed to return at any point in time its go to return for any kind of emergency on the station,” he said. For a regular scheduled return, they still have checks and certain procedures along with the results they need first.
As far as the timeline goes, there is still a lot of unknowns. They mentioned that they hope to complete the testing at White Sands by the end of this week or over the weekend. If that were the case and the results were promising a return late this month could be possible. However, he mentioned that a departure in July would be optimistic which suggests August is much more likely. This also doesn’t factor in possible changes based on what they find with continued testing over the next week or so.
To put the amount of work needed into perspective, Mark Nappi was quoted saying, “There were a number of specific actions that were identified from both the helium and thruster anomalies, just a little bit over 30 of them. Of which more than half of them are closed at the moment. So what were doing is some of these are items like the tests that Steve mentioned, that is the biggest item to work off, but there’s a lot of minor types of closures where were furnishing some artifacts from previous testing or model analysis or doing some analysis to anchor some of our engineering conclusions. So those are being worked off. All of these items are scheduled to be completed by the end of next week” he said.
Shifting the focus to the crew, which has now been at the station for over a month, they answered a few questions this morning in a separate media briefing. Butch mentioned, the “Launch was spectacular. I mean, truly amazing. And then we got into our operational capabilities checks, and the spacecraft performed unbelievably well.” He also mentioned that around the time of thruster failure, he could feel that the thrust had degraded. In one final quote he said, “But thankfully, we had practiced and we had gotten certified for manual control, and so we took over manual control for over an hour.” Overall the crew seems to be in good spirits and enjoying the extra time at the station.
Toward the end of the teleconference during the question phase, they were asked about the possibility of using a different vehicle to return the crew such as Dragon. Stich replied, “The testing at white Sands is hugely important to that. Taking the data that we learn from White Sands and looking at the thruster and inspecting it physically just to make sure that with all these pulses and all the heat that were putting into it that it doesn’t cause any damage to the thruster at all. The data from the flight suggests that the thrusters, expect for the one thruster that did not recover, are operating just fine. I think that physical inspection is probably the most important thing that’s going to happen over the next week or so. And then you know after that we talked about the beautiful thing about the commercial crew program is that we have two vehicles, two different systems that we could use to return crew. So we have a little bit more time to go through the data and then make a decision as to whether we need to do anything different. But the prime option today is to return Butch and Suni on Starliner. Right now we don’t see any reason that wouldn’t be the case” he said.
Nappi added, “The plans are to bring the crew home on Starliner, we see no reason why that should be changed. We’ve got good hardware, were trying to add to the engineering database so that we can bring good flight rationale together to our senior mission management team, and provide more information so we can again fix these problems once and for all.”
Based on everything said, its clear that they need more time to figure out what to do next. With this being a certification mission, it brings up concerns about future Starliner hardware for the Starliner 1 mission for example. They expressed that a decent amount of work will be needed to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again on future Starliner launches. Lastly, as for the 45-day mission cap, at this point, they are confident that they can go well beyond that timeframe thanks to the battery’s current health. This would have limited the mission date toward the middle of this month but it looks like Starliner will be docked at the station for at least a few more weeks. As we get closer to August the amount of options will begin to lower and a decision will need to be made. We can expect another update similar to today’s later this month likely around the 20th. There we should get more information on the exact plan and state of the vehicle.
Conclusion
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is still at the ISS as testing continues. Teams are trying to replicate what happened around the initial docking sequence but aren’t having the best luck. We will have to wait and see how it progresses and the impact it has on the space industry.