NASA again could not come to a balanced opinion on the return of the Boeing Starliner ship and crew to Earth. But time and dwindling supplies at the station are running out. The agency promises to make a final decision on the fate of the astronauts stuck on the station at the end of next week or at the beginning of the last week of August. But there is also good news.
Image source: NASA
NASA called the openness of opinions and free discussion of any options for solving it a positive aspect of the emergency situation with the Boeing Starliner. This increases the crew’s chances of avoiding the fate of the Challenger and Columbia shuttle crews. Then the expert opinion either was not heard at all or was not heard by NASA management, which led to fatal accidents. This was the impetus for the organization of independent expert offices in the agency. And now specialists conscientiously earn their living, providing management with data to make the best decision.
At a NASA briefing on August 14, 2024, it was stated that no new important data had emerged that could influence this or that decision. Some experts asked for additional data, some said a categorical “no” to the return of the crew on the Boeing ship, some said “yes.” In general, it was decided to study even more deeply the problem with failures of the ship’s maneuvering engines, five of which (28 in total) turned off during the Starliner docking with the ISS on June 5.
New bench tests of engines at NASA’s test site on Earth have revealed the probable cause of engine overheating – the shutdown of the oxidizer supply valve to the engine due to swelling of the Teflon seal. Now NASA is creating a three-dimensional model of the valve in order to finally understand the physics of the emergency process.
If the likelihood of new correction engine failures is higher than acceptable, the Starliner crew – NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams – will return to Earth on SpaceX’s Dragon Crew-9. To do this, two people instead of four will fly on the Dragon Crew-9 ship at the end of September 2024. In this case, the Starliner crew will return home in February 2025. They understood that they might be delayed on the station, but they hardly expected to be stuck on the ISS for 7 or 8 months.