NASA is at a crossroads when it comes to the conclusion of the crewed flight test of Boeing’s Starliner. The agency is set to announce its decision on whether or not NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams will return on the Starliner as originally planned or on a SpaceX Crew Dragon.
The selection will be formalized after an agency-level meeting called a flight readiness review concludes on Saturday. A news conference is tentatively scheduled for 1:00 p.m. EDT (17:00 UTC).
Spaceflight Now will have live coverage of the decision beginning about 30 minutes before the start of the press conference.
The review will serve as a final overview of learnings from the past two months related to multiple helium leaks detected in Starliner’s service module, as well as issues with five thrusters, which were detected during rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station following the mission’s launch on June 5.
In his most recent comments on the topic, in the form of a statement dated August 2, Blog entryBoeing argued that “extensive testing of its propulsion system in space and on the ground” gives it “high” confidence in being able to safely return Wilmore and Williams on Starliner as originally planned.
“Our confidence is based on this wealth of valuable testing from Boeing and NASA. Testing has confirmed that 27 of the 28 RCS boosters are healthy and have returned to full operational capability,” Boeing wrote in its post. “Starliner’s propulsion system also maintains redundancy and helium levels remain stable. The data also supports root cause assessments of the helium and propellant issues and the flight justification for the return of Starliner and its crew to Earth.”
During conference calls over the past month, NASA officials have not explicitly said they are leaning toward one option or the other, but each briefing with members of the press included more information about what a return scenario using SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft instead of Starliner would look like.
“With the Starliner crew flight test, the option to bring the crew home on Starliner or on another vehicle, we could go either way and reasonable people could go either way depending on what their view is about where we stand on the uncertainty boundary that we have for the data that we have on the propulsion system, on the propulsion system,” Ken Bowersox, NASA associate administrator for the Space Operations Mission Directorate, said in an Aug. 7 teleconference.
“So what we’re trying to do going forward is reduce that uncertainty, see if we can get more consensus within our team, and at the same time take a more serious look at our other options.”
Bowersox is a former astronaut who has lived experience facing the need to change course on a spacecraft. He was aboard the International Space Station in 2003 when the Columbia disaster occurred and returned to Earth on a Soyuz spacecraft after NASA decided to ground the space shuttle fleet.
He said that while NASA's safety culture two decades ago allowed for input through the NASA Safety Reporting System, the impact of input from a broad range of voices is even greater today.
“If you saw something that wasn't good, you were supposed to bring it up and something could be escalated immediately. But what our current process does is it increases the volume of that input from technical authorities, from safety people, from engineering people, from flight crew, from the centers and gives us a formal way to encourage, analyze and make a decision on dissenting opinions,” Bowersox said during an Aug. 14 teleconference.
“So there is still a point where it all comes together, right? And that is at the top. This gives that person the opportunity to get the best information when the decision is made.”
The current man in charge, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, will absorb all the analysis conducted on Starliner over the past two months, both in orbit and from ground testing at a variety of locations.
If the agency opts for the Crew Dragon contingency plan, SpaceX would launch the spacecraft aboard its Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than Sept. 24 with just two of the original four crew members on board. It would also carry along two flight suits for Wilmore and Williams to support a return flight home in February 2025.
That decision would extend the weeklong journey to nearly 270 days in orbit. In that scenario, the Starliner spacecraft would undock autonomously and uncrewed in early September to land at White Sands, New Mexico, similar to the second uncrewed orbital flight test (OFT-2) in 2022.
