Why Boeing Starliner is still docked to the ISS

NASA held a press conference yesterday to talk about NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and Starliner. In attendance were Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate; Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program; Bill Spetch, operations integrations manager; Emily Nelson, chief flight director at JSC; and Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program element.

‘Starliner is not stranded, The crew is safe’

Throughout the conference the same thing was said by multiple panel members; Starliner is not stranded at the ISS. The crew is safe. Reiterated by Ken and Mark.

They also detail why they want to stay at the station longer – which is that they want to test the thrusters more before they jettison it. They want to understand the thruster’s behavior that resulted in a delay in the capsule’s docking to the ISS.

Ken highlighted a comment he made about Starliner’s return during the post-launch press briefing. “Nobody should get too excited about any particular landing date because once we got up there, we might want to look at some data a little more closely”. He then added, “But also to see if there’s any extra data, we want to collect on the return home. But everyone should understand we’re still in the middle of a test mission”.

Steve Stich reports there are no new issues to report. Backing up Ken’s comment, he emphasized they are not stranded on the space station. This is true even during a satellite breakup. Forcing the crew to perform safe haven procedures inside their capsules.

Steve made mention of the importance of its mission length. Starliner’s current mission time is only ~11% of its design lifetime of 210 days while docked. Leaving the spacecraft with plenty of time to perform these additional tests.

Speaking about the flight’s issues and checks, Steve brought up the earlier helium leak. He noted that there are no helium leaks at this time. They are continuing to work through data and systems to verify this through fault trees. They only need seven hours of helium to undock and deorbit. He further added, “We have ten times that margin”.

Steve mentioned that tests are ongoing at White Sands to understand the issue occurring with the thrusters on the service module. They want to run the thruster through the same conditions and pulse firing that Calypso has. This is so they can identify the root cause. They could also use this time to perform additional test firings while docked to the ISS.

Press Questions

ABC News leading the Q&A section made a request echoed by many other members of the press panel. That we wish to have more information on the mission, especially with their progress in troubleshooting these issues.

CBS News asked a question repeated by other press members. Asking about NASA and Boeing’s confidence in bringing back Starliner given its issues. Especially in an emergency. Steve replied saying, “When we say its safe to come home in an emergency, we have confidence in the Starliner systems that the vehicle will be go [to] execute the sep sequence with no problems, and get to the deorbit burn with no problems and then execute a deorbit burn and once the service module obviously, has jettisoned then it’s the crew module which doesn’t have any significant issues or anomalies at all. I think what we really want to do is since it’s a new vehicle, new spacecraft, we want to take a little more time to understand the thruster performance.”

Kenneth Chang from the New York Times had the following to add during his time- “I just want to give the opportunity to speak a bit more emphatic about what you’re saying that not only this is what you should be doing with the Starliner testing, but it would be effectively irresponsible if you weren’t doing this”. A comment lauded by Ken who said “we’re trying to do this mission right” and “I really value your comments and that you see what we’re trying to do”.