SpaceX Crew Dragon Capsule to Bring Boeing Starliner Crew Back to Earth – Indianapolis News | Indiana Weather

(CNN) — The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule will carry two NASA astronauts who have been stranded aboard the International Space Station for about 80 days because of problems with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft — a surprising turnaround for the beleaguered aerospace giant.

The news comes after the space agency conducted a formal inspection Saturday to determine whether it will deem Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft safe enough to return home with its crew, or whether SpaceX’s Crew Dragon workhorse spacecraft will need to step in to save the day.

The Starliner spacecraft that carried astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the space station in early June suffered setbacks with helium leaks and engines that suddenly stopped working early in the first crewed test flight. Engineers spent weeks trying to better understand the problems, and Boeing said as recently as Aug. 2 that “confidence remains high” that the spacecraft would be able to return Williams and Wilmore to Earth.

But NASA revealed during an Aug. 7 news conference that discussions within the space agency about the safety of the Starliner capsule had progressed — prompting the federal agency to more seriously consider the possibility of flying astronauts home on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicle, which has flown about a dozen crewed space missions since 2020.

Nelson said Saturday that NASA took into account its extensive experience with spaceflight — both successful and unsuccessful — in making the decision.

“We’ve made mistakes in the past: We lost two space shuttles because there wasn’t a culture where information could get out,” Nelson said. “Spaceflight is risky, even in the safest and most routine situations. And a test flight is inherently neither safe nor routine.”

SpaceX is already scheduled to fly a routine mission to the International Space Station, taking four astronauts as part of the standard crew rotation aboard the orbiting lab. But the mission, called Crew-9, will now be reconfigured to carry two astronauts instead of four.

The change will leave two empty seats for Williams and Wilmore to fill on Crew 9’s flight home. The astronauts will also join Crew 9, becoming part of an official mission to the ISS. The change will keep Williams and Wilmore on the ground for an additional six months—the length of a routine mission to the space station.

The duo’s transfer to Crew-9 will result in the duo’s return not occurring until February 2025 at the earliest.

Starliner, however, will fly home empty. If its unmanned return flight goes well, NASA will face a critical decision: whether to grant Starliner official certification for human spaceflight—a step that would allow the vehicle to routinely travel to orbit—despite the fact that it did not complete its mission as planned.

Faulty engines

Five of Starliner’s 28 “reaction control engines” failed during Boeing’s first-stage test mission. All but one were eventually recovered.

Although Williams and Wilmore had expected to spend only eight days in space, their stay aboard the orbiting laboratory had already been extended by about two months as engineers on Earth worked to better understand engine problems.

Officials said they were able to recreate how the space engines failed during flight by conducting tests on the ground. A possible cause was a buildup of heat inside the engines, which could have caused insulating seals to bulge, restricting fuel flow, Boeing said.

Separately, helium leak issues may be the result of seal degradation caused by exposure to fuel vapors, according to comments by Mark Nappi, Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program manager, on July 25.

Yet NASA still could not reach a consensus on how these problems would affect astronauts’ return from space — or how much risk they would pose.

Uncertainty about the level of risk is why the agency turned to SpaceX and its workhorse Crew Dragon for help.

Starliner’s Rocky Path

NASA has repeatedly said that SpaceX has the capability springing into action highlights how the space agency intentionally designed its Commercial Crew Program — which developed both Starliner and Crew Dragon — so that each spacecraft could serve as a backup for the other.

“We’re in a completely new situation, and we have a lot of options,” Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, said Aug. 7. “That’s something we’ll have to deal with in the future — we could be in a situation where we have to bring a (SpaceX) Dragon or a (Russian) Soyuz crew back on a Starliner.

“That’s why we want to have multiple vehicles to be able to do that,” Bowersox added.

Yet the federal agency funded SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner programs simultaneously in 2014. Crew Dragon has been operational for four years, while Starliner is hundreds of millions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.

Boeing’s development process was also marked by mistakes.

For example, Starliner’s first test mission—flew in 2019 without a crew—failed in orbit and ended far below expectations. The spacecraft ultimately failed to dock with the space station as planned, a result that turned out to be a symptom of myriad software issues, including a coding error that delayed its internal clock by 11 hours.

A second uncrewed flight test in May 2022 revealed additional software issues, and mission teams addressed problems with some of the vehicle’s thrusters. But the root cause of the thruster problems that plagued this crewed mission was overlooked two years ago.

Whether the Starliner vehicle will ultimately be certified for return to Earth will likely be a controversial issue, which is considered the most dangerous stage of the mission. The autonomous vehicle will need to use thrusters to precisely orient itself as it plunges back into Earth’s thick atmosphere. The pressure and friction are expected to heat the vehicle’s exterior to about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 degrees Celsius).

The Starliner parachutes must then deploy smoothly and slow the spacecraft before deploying the airbags that will expand and cushion the landing.

If the Starliner capsule is ultimately certified, it could join SpaceX’s Crew Dragon on routine trips to the space station to rotate personnel, which currently occur about every six months.

And if the spacecraft is denied certification, it would be another blow to Boeing’s already battered reputation. Missing the mark could cost the company millions of dollars—on top of the roughly $1.5 billion it has already recorded in losses from the Starliner program.

The budget overrun has sparked repeated rumors that Boeing might not see the Starliner program through to completion.

However, Nelson said Saturday that he recently spoke with new Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg about the status of the Starliner.

“I told him how well Boeing worked with our team to make this decision,” Nelson said, “and he expressed to me his intention that they would continue to work on the issues once Starliner had returned safely and we had our backup equipment and crew access to the space station.”