NASA assures that Boeing Starliner astronauts are not stranded on ISS

NASA officials said that despite an indefinite delay in their return to Earth, the Boeing Starliner crew stuck at the International Space Station due to mechanical issues with their spacecraft are not “stranded” in space.Starliner commander Butch Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams have been confined to the space station for weeks after their June 5 launch on Boeing’s first manned space flight. They were due to return on June 13 after a week at the station — but the craft suffered issues with its thrusters and helium leaks when docking at the station, keeping them in orbit indefinitely as engineers analyze the problems.“We don’t have a targeted (landing) date today,” Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, told reporters during a teleconference, CBS reported.“We’re not going to target a specific date until we get that testing completed.“So essentially, it’s complete the testing, complete the fault tree, bring that analysis into (the mission management team), and then have an agency-level review.

And then we’ll lay out the rest of the plan from undock to landing.I think we’re on a good path.”The return module of the Starliner spacecraft is docked to the ISS’s Harmony module, but Harmony has limited fuel, narrowing the window for a return date.Boeing’s service module, which houses the helium lines, thrusters and other critical systems, is discarded before re-entry and burns up in the atmosphere, according to CBS.Engineers want to study the failed systems and hardware before it’s destroyed and collect as much data as possible before the astronauts return home.

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Never miss a story.Stich and Mark Nappi, Boeing’s Starliner program manager, insisted that Wilmore and Williams ar...