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Boeing hit back on Wednesday at suggestions that two Nasa astronauts had become “stranded” on the International Space Station because of problems encountered by the company’s Starliner spacecraft on its long-delayed first crewed flight.
Nasa and Boeing decided last week to postpone, for the second time, the return flight of the spacecraft, which docked with the space station on June 6, until an unspecified date in July.
Starliner was “performing well”, the company said, and astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore could return to earth at any time, if necessary.
The delay comes at the worst possible time for Boeing, which is still mired in controversy over the safety culture in its commercial aerospace division.
Earlier this month Dave Calhoun, Boeing’s outgoing chief executive, was hauled before the US Senate to answer questions about the company’s safety failures following a mid-air blowout of a door panel on one of its 737 Max aircraft in January.
The company has been locked in an almost permanent state of crisis since two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people.
The defence and space business, meanwhile, has been struggling financially, incurring losses of $1.7bn last year.
The Starliner programme itself is several years late and billions of dollars over budget. The spacecraft’s first crewed flight had been postponed twice before lifting off on June 5.
The company insisted however that the delayed return was not a failure. “It is a test flight,” the company said. “The mission is still going and it is going well,”
Nasa is hoping Starliner will eventually be a viable competitor to Elon Musk’s SpaceX for cargo and crew to the ISS and eventually the Moon.
The US agency had decided to delay the astronauts’ return to put some time between the flight and upcoming spacewalks by other astronauts on the space station. These had also been postponed because of issues with old space suits.
The delay would also allow engineers more time to review problems identified on Starliner’s flight to the ISS, Nasa said.
Starliner suffered helium leaks on its long-awaited first crewed flight, as well as problems with five of its thrusters. Boeing said the helium leaks had been fixed and all but one of the thrusters were now operational.
However, it was decided to spend more time assessing the causes, as they affected the service module which would not return to earth. This data would be lost on return so “we are taking time to understand the issues further,” Boeing said.
Steve Stich, manager of Nasa’s commercial crew programme, said last Friday that the agency was “letting the data drive our decision making” around the helium leaks and thruster problems. Starliner was “performing well in orbit while docked to the space station,” he added.
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