Stuck in Space

When astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore left Earth in June on an eight-day mission, they had to jettison their luggage to fit in some spare parts for the International Space Station.
A week on the ISS without underwear or a change of clothes wouldn’t have been too bad .. but that eight days has now turned into eight months.
Their Boeing Starliner has issues, and Nasa isn’t willing to take Boeing’s word for it that they’ll be fine.
Instead, the pair will return in February on a SpaceX DragonX flight.
“The astronauts on this mission … they’re very highly trained astronauts, they’ve flown many missions in the past, they’ll be very prepared for a variety of eventualities,” says Dr Ben Taylor, senior research fellow at Auckland University’s Space Institute.
Today on The Detail he talks about what the pair are in for during their extended stay, what went wrong with the Starliner and where this leaves Nasa’s legacy contractor, Boeing.
He says Nasa and Boeing “had previous issues on their unmanned flight tests, they’d obviously satisfied themselves that those problems had been fixed, and now they’re doing this first crewed flight”.
“In the process of doing this flight they’re looking to stress test the vehicle a little bit, put it through its paces before it then does its approach to the space station. That’s where they start to see some issues where the propulsion system wasn’t quite doing what it was meant to be doing. The thrusters weren’t firing quite efficiently, some of them were being shut down, they had some (helium) leaks in the pressurisation systems … so a variety of little problems they were having on the vehicle as they were coming to this approach to the space station.
“Valves and thrusters seem to have been a common theme, unfortunately, along this programme.”
Initially the pair stayed for an extra couple of weeks to work with engineers on the ground to solve the problems, but Nasa last weekend announced it was too risky to attempt a return in Starliner, and they would instead hitch a ride back with the opposition next year.
At that press conference Nasa administrator Bill Nelson was asked if he still had faith in Boeing, and he replied, “100 percent”.
But Nasa’s commercial crew programme manager Steve Stich, when asked if the organisation still trusted Boeing, replied that it wasn’t about trust.
“I would call it a technical disagreement,” he said.
Boeing has had a bad year, with questions over the quality control on its aircraft. In the first week of 2024, an Alaska Air Boeing 737 Max 9 passenger jet lost a rear door plug midflight, and the model was grounded.
Two airlines then found loose parts on their grounded jets. Air authorities said Boeing wasn’t sharing basic details. Boeing has seen its reputation battered since two 737 Max 8 airliners crashed in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people. Fixed price contracts with Nasa have also contributed to Boeing’s financial woes.
“I think that would probably trigger a bit more scrutiny in terms of what their processes are in quality control,” says Taylor.
SpaceX also had some early problems, but in the past four years it has launched 13 human space flight missions.
SpaceX “has been firing on all cylinders,” says Taylor.
On September 24 it was due to send up a shuttle with four astronauts, but now it will save two of those seats for the stranded astronauts who will fill them for the February return.
Meanwhile Williams and Wilmore will help out on the ISS, do some space walks and look at the view of planet Earth.
They’ll help clear a backlog of requests from scientists waiting for the ISS to conduct experiments on board the station.
And the astronauts have their undies back – the ISS is sent frequent supplies, and their luggage came up on a later flight.
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