NASA plans to significantly delay the launch of the Crew 9 mission to the ISS due to persistent concern about the safety of the Starliner spacecraft. Its departure date to Earth is still unknown.
Starliner return date
The Starliner was launched on June 5. Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams were on board. The main purpose of their mission was a comprehensive test of all systems of the spacecraft in real flight conditions.
During docking with the ISS, the spacecraft failed several engines of the orientation system. Most of them were later restored to operation, but this raised questions about the safety of using Starliner to return to Earth.
After extensive ground testing of the engines, as well as several short-term launches in space, NASA planned to make a decision last week on returning the Starliner with or without a crew. However, it had to be postponed due to internal disagreements among the organization’s staff over the safety of the spacecraft.
Software problems
Now it became clear that there was a new problem that made the situation even more complicated. It’s about the spacecraft’s software. According to the source of Arstechnica, in case NASA decides to return Starliner without a crew, the current software will not be able to perform its automatic undocking from the ISS and entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
At first glance, this seems absurd. After all, under its previous mission in 2022, the crewless Starliner performed an automatic docking with the ISS, after which it returned to Earth. However, Arstechnica claims that this is exactly the case. It is currently unknown what changes Boeing representatives have made to the device or its software over the next two years. Anyway, Arstechnica’s sources said the process of updating it was a “non-trivial” task and could take up to four weeks.
This situation pushes NASA to postpone the Crew-9 mission, initially scheduled to go to the ISS on August 18. Officials are considering shifting its launch date to September 24. This would give NASA more time to make a decision. If the organization declines to use the Starliner to return Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams to Earth, then the Crew-9 team will be reduced from four to two people.
In turn, Boeing is actively convincing NASA to use the Starliner to return astronauts to Earth. The company believes it has provided enough data to be confident that the spacecraft is safe and that its engines will not fail.
According to Arstechnica
