The Boeing Starliner launched back in early June for a short test mission to the ISS. It was supposed to stay for 10 days and return. The astronauts are still there.
What's going on with Starliner? On this edition of Weekend Insight, TPR’s Jerry Clayton talks to resident space expert Chris Combs, Dee Howard Endowed Associate Professor in Aerodynamics in the UTSA Department of Mechanical Engineering.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Clayton: Let's talk about the original mission of the Starliner. What was it supposed to do?
Combs: This was supposed to be just a short trip up to the International Space Station, basically as a crewed flight test to demonstrate that Starliner was basically ready to go and was going to be able to deliver through up to the International Space Station. But it has been, as has been clear in the news, extended quite a bit.
Clayton: What went wrong, from what you can tell?
Combs: Well, there were some leaks in the helium system that are used to power some thrusters that helped the spacecraft maneuver. It was never explicitly clear how serious these various helium leaks were. But eventually, NASA and Boeing have come out and said that they determined after some investigation that the helium leaks were not significant enough where they were worrying about depleting the helium over the duration of the mission.
One thing I think that's important to understand is, all leaks are not created equal, right? And so there can be small leaks that are detected by these very sensitive sensors. But they can be very, very slow. But you could similarly have very large leaks that are extremely concerning. And it sounds like we're looking at the former, although there are multiple of these leaks in different systems. And so that's part of why they're trying to work to understand this.
Clayton: So how big of a deal is it if Starliner has to stay a month and a half or two months or even more?
Combs: So, Starliner was designed to last considerably longer than 45 days, I think it was a six-month plan for how long this spacecraft was designed to be on orbit. So the 45 days was really just kind of a limit. They set for this first mission due to the battery life because they hadn't tested them and on orbit yet, but it sounds like the batteries are being recharged by the space station per design. So they are at least going to extend this another 45 days — it sounds like — and so it really it sounds like they're operating well within the design of the system. So I think time is not the concern that maybe people initially thought that it was.
Clayton: So, we can say that the characterizations that have been made about Starliner being stranded at the ISS are false, right?
Combs: The reason that they are up there waiting is because NASA and Boeing want to study these valves and these thrusters as much as they can, because they're going to burn up when Starliner returns to Earth. So the only place they can test this problem is while it's up at the space station. They’re going to be doing some tests out at White Sands as well on the ground to see if they can replicate the issue. And they want to compare that to what it's doing on the space station.
So they're really just doing experimentation right now. And they're doing as much as they can because there's really no risk to staying up there longer. I think it really illustrates the comfort that they have with Starliner. They’re just trying to understand what's going on before they come back so that they can fix it for the next one. If they were really concerned about this being able to hold up, they would have come back already. So I think that's important to illustrate.
And it's funny that double standard that you see. Sometimes SpaceX can blow up a starship, and then share its success about all the data that they collect. But Starliner is sitting safely at the International Space Station, collecting data that we all like to see that’s valuable, but people are acting like it's stranded. So I think it's important to keep that perspective.
Chris Combs is the at UTSA.
