NASA is at a crossroads when it comes to the conclusion of the Boeing Starliner Crew Flight Test. The agency is set to announce its decision on whether or not to return NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams on Starliner as originally intended or on a SpaceX Crew Dragon.
The choice will be formalized after an agency-level meeting called a flight readiness review wraps up on Saturday. A press conference is tentatively set for 1 p.m. EDT (1700 UTC).
Spaceflight Now will have live coverage of the decision beginning about 30 minutes prior to the start of the news conference.
The review will serve as a final overview of the learnings from the past two months connected to multiple helium leaks detected on the Starliner’s service module as well as issues in five thrusters, which were detected during rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station following the mission launch on June 5.
In its most recent comments on the matter, in the form of an Aug. 2 blog post, Boeing argued that the “extensive testing of its propulsion system in space and on the ground” give it “high” confidence in being able to return Wilmore and Williams safely on Starliner as originally intended.
“Our confidence is based on this abundance of valuable testing from Boeing and NASA. The testing has confirmed 27 of 28 RCS thrusters are healthy and back to full operational capability,” Boeing wrote in its post. “Starliner’s propulsion system also maintains redundancy and the helium levels remain stable. The data also supports root cause assessments for the helium and thruster issues and flight rationale for Starliner and its crew’s return to Earth.”
During teleconferences held within the past month, NASA officials haven’t said explicitly that they’re leaning one way or another, but each briefing to members of the press included more information regarding what a scenario featuring a return using SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft instead of Starliner would look like.
“With the Starliner Crew Flight Test, the option to either bring the crew home on Starliner or to bring the crew home on another vehicle, we could take either path and reasonable people could pick either path, depending on where their view is on our position in the uncertainty bound that we have for the data that we’ve got on the thruster system, on the propulsion system,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for the Space Operations Mission Directorate in an Aug. 7 teleconference.
“So, moving forward, what we’re trying to do is reduce that uncertainty, see if we can drive some more consensus amongst our team. At the same time, getting more serious about evaluating our other options.”
Bowersox is a former astronaut who has lived experience in facing the need for a spacecraft pivot. He was onboard the International Space Station in 2003 when the Columbia disaster happened and he returned to Earth on a Soyuz spacecraft after NASA decided to ground the space shuttle fleet.
He said while the safety culture of NASA two decades ago allowed for input through the NASA Safety Reporting System, he said the impact of input from a wide swath of voices is even greater today.
“If you saw something that wasn’t good, you were supposed to bring it up and something could get elevated right away. But what our current process does is it raises the volume on those inputs from the tech authorities, from the safety folks, the engineering folks, from the flight crew, the centers and it gives us a formal way to encourage and to analyze and make a decision on dissenting opinions,” Bowersox said during an Aug. 14 teleconference.
“So, there’s still one point where it all comes together, right, and that’s up at the top. This gives that person at the top a chance to get the best information when the decision’s made.”
The current man at the top, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, will be absorbing all of the analysis on Starliner performed over the past two months, both on orbit as well as the testing done on the ground at a variety of locations.
If the agency opts for the Crew Dragon contingency plan, SpaceX would launch the spacecraft atop its Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than Sept. 24 with only two of the original four crew members onboard. It would also carry with it two flight suits for Wilmore and Williams to support a return flight home in February 2025.
That decision would expand their stated week-long trip to nearly 270 days on orbit. In that scenario, the Starliner spacecraft would undock autonomously and uncrewed in early September with a landing at White Sands, New Mexico, similar to to the unpiloted Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2) in 2022.
