Boeing’s crewed Starliner flight won’t return until August

Boeing’s crew spacecraft Starliner will stay docked with the International Space Station into August, NASA confirmed on Thursday, as the mission remains on hold while the company and agency study problems that arose early in the flight.

Starliner capsule “Calypso,” which carried NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the ISS, has now been in space 50 days and counting. The Boeing crew flight test has been extended several times while NASA conducted testing back on the ground prior to clearing the spacecraft to carry the pair of astronauts back to Earth.

NASA’s Commercial Crew manager Steve Stich said during a press conference Thursday that the agency was not prepared to set a return date.

“We’re making great progress, but we’re just not quite ready to do that,” Stich said.

NASA needs to conduct a review that won’t happen until the first week of August, Stich said, and only after that review will the agency schedule Starliner’s return.

The indefinite extension of Starliner’s flight test is difficult to put into context of other human spaceflights due to the unique circumstances and developmental nature of the mission. Any crewed spaceflight comes with heightened risk and scrutiny. Originally, Calypso was expected to spend a minimum of nine days in space before returning.

“I think we all knew that it was going to go longer than that. We didn’t spend a lot of time talking about how much longer, but I think it’s my regret that we we didn’t just say we’re going to stay up there until we get everything done that we want to go to do,” Boeing’s Mark Nappi, vice president of the Starliner program, said on Thursday.

Both NASA and Boeing leadership have repeatedly stressed that Wilmore and Williams “are not stranded in space.” Officials previously said that Starliner is safe to return in the event of an emergency and that the pair of astronauts are enjoying the extra time on the ISS and assisting the rest of the station’s crew with tasks in the meantime.

Boeing and NASA earlier this month began testing the spacecraft’s malfunctioning propulsion system back on the ground in White Sands, New Mexico.

Stich and Nappi outlined the next steps that must be completed before making the call on when to bring back Starliner.

Boeing on Thursday is finishing dissection of the thruster that was tested in New Mexico. On Thursday afternoon, NASA and Boeing will hold a mission management meeting to plan the docked test firings that are expected to happen on Saturday or Sunday. Then, on Monday or Tuesday, the teams will do “an integrated assessment of all the data” from the docked tests, Stich said, before “some significant education of [NASA] leadership” ahead the final big review, also known as “Agency Flight Test Readiness Review.”

Stich also acknowledged again that NASA has contingency plans in case the agency determines that Starliner should return without Wilmore and Williams — alternatives that include using SpaceX’s Dragon capsule to bring back NASA’s astronauts.

“NASA always has contingency options. We know a little bit of what those are, and we haven’t worked on them a whole bunch, but we kind of know what those are,” Stich said. “Right now we’re really focused on bringing Butch and Suni home on Starliner.”