By RTL News··Modified:
RTL
The intention was eight days. But astronauts Barry Wilmore and Suni Williams have been stuck on the International Space Station for two months. The Starliner spacecraft they took on the outbound trip isn’t yet safe enough to return. The question now is how long it will be before that’s possible.
Wilmore and Williams departed for the International Space Station on June 5. They traveled on the new Starliner spacecraft, developed by Boeing. A helium leak was discovered during the flight. Such a problem had also existed before launch. In addition, there were problems with the spacecraft’s propulsion.
Those issues haven’t been resolved yet. Boeing has recently conducted all sorts of ground tests using other Starliner engines to see if the spacecraft can safely return to Earth. In the meantime, other options are also being explored, but recovering the stranded astronauts in the short term certainly doesn’t seem like an option.
According to space expert Jeroen Glasner, one option now is for NASA to return Boeing’s Starliner to Earth unmanned. “That’s a good thing in itself, there’s a high degree of automation, so there’s no need for astronauts necessarily.”
The reason the Starliner could return unmanned, but not with astronauts on board, is safety. “There’s a 99 percent chance that everything will go well,” Glasner says. “But the standard is that the chance of something going wrong has to be less than 1 in 300.”
SpaceX
There is also a backup plan. But for that they are counting on SpaceX. “A spacecraft from that company will soon be leaving for the International Space Station. The plan then is for the four astronauts to go, and two to stay on Earth. So that the two stranded astronauts can return with that device in February.”
That could rightly be described as an embarrassment for Boeing if another company is needed to safely return astronauts to Earth, and Glasner knows that this also has implications for SpaceX’s planned mission.
“The personal safety of the astronauts is assured, but the result is that fully trained astronauts for the experiments that need to be performed will not be there for the next six months. Williams and Wilmore can certainly help, but they are certainly not a substitute.”
The Starliner mission is now turning into a major television series. The mission had been delayed for years due to previous flaws.
little success
With Starliner, Boeing wants to compete with Dragon from SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space company, but that vehicle has safely flown to the International Space Station and back more than twenty times.
For Boeing, this is only the third flight, only one of which can be described as partially successful.
