Astronauts not stuck on space station, NASA and Boeing officials say

Two NASA astronauts who traveled at the start of June to the International Space Station were originally scheduled to return home a couple of weeks ago, completing a test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.

Instead, the astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, will remain on the space station for several weeks longer as NASA and Boeing engineers continue to study misbehaving thrusters on the vehicle.

But don’t call the astronauts stuck or stranded, officials said Friday. And there’s no talk of a rescue mission.

“We’re not stuck on ISS,” Mark Nappi, program manager at Boeing for Starliner, said during a news conference Friday. “The crew is not in any danger.”

Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, also tried to allay worries.

“The vehicle at station is in good shape,” he said. “I want to make it very clear that Butch and Suni are not stranded in space. Our plan is to continue to return them on Starliner and return them home at the right time.”

Stich then added that the right time would be after additional analysis on why five of Starliner’s 28 maneuvering jets behaved oddly as the spacecraft approached the space station. Starliner’s computers, which were autonomously guiding the spacecraft, were able to compensate with the remaining thrusters.

Four of the five thrusters now appear to be working properly; the other thruster will not be used during the trip home. Mission managers expect that Starliner can undock from the space station and take Wilmore and Williams on their return trip from space, but they do not fully understand what caused the problem.

Fatal disasters in NASA’s history, including the loss of the Challenger and Columbia space shuttles, have taught mission managers to be cautious and curious when something is not quite right.

“I think they’re doing their due diligence,” Wayne Hale, a retired NASA flight director, said in an interview. “Being in no hurry to come home, it makes a great deal of sense to take the time to gather as much information as possible so that they can make sure that the problems are all fixed. That makes a great deal of sense, to take your time.”

Nappi offered a similar appraisal during Friday’s news conference, saying it was prudent to use the time for additional analysis.

“It would be irresponsible for us — if we have time and we want to do more — not to do it,” he said.

Beginning next week, engineers will conduct ground tests at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in California using a thruster identical to the ones on Starliner. The firings will reproduce the ones that Starliner performed in space.

That will probably take a couple of weeks, Stich said. “Then we’ll give engineers a chance to go look at that thruster,” he said.

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