Howdy space cadets, it’s Loren Grush in Austin. Have you caught all the headlines about Boeing’s Starliner capsule being stuck in space, leaving its crew stranded? NASA and Boeing aren’t too happy about that. But before we discuss that ...
Three things you need to know today:
• SpaceX’s value has soared to a record $210 billion.
• Amazon’s delaying the launch of its internet-from-space satellites.
• SpaceX is getting $843 million to guide the International Space Station to a fiery end.
That was the very loud message the space agency and Boeing projected to media on Friday, when officials held a conference call about the delayed Starliner mission currently docked to the International Space Station.
No, astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams are not stuck in space and yes, they will come home – eventually, NASA and Boeing officials said.
But the vague answers didn’t provide us with much clarity about how severe Starliner’s situation really is.
What was supposed to be roughly a week-long test flight to the ISS is now probably going to last months, as NASA and Boeing continue to delay Starliner’s return to Earth. They say they want to better understand a series of technical issues the spacecraft experienced since launching June 5 on its first crewed test flight to space.
Confusion surrounding the delays prompted headlines proclaiming that Wilmore and Williams are “stuck” or “stranded” in space and that Starliner couldn’t bring the crew home. NASA and Boeing admonished reporters for the phrasing, but still haven’t given a time frame for the crew’s return.
“I want to make it very clear that Butch and Suni are not stranded in space,” Steve Stich, a NASA program manager overseeing the mission, said. “Our plan is to continue to return them on Starliner and return them home.”
Mark Nappi, a Boeing vice president also overseeing the mission, remarked how “painful” it was to read all the headlines and stories he’s been getting on his Google alerts.
So what is ultimately going on? NASA and Boeing say that Starliner is fully capable of bringing Williams and Wilmore back to Earth in the case of an emergency. They say they want to keep Starliner in space for as long as they can to better analyze a series of helium leaks and issues with the vehicle’s thrusters – tiny engines that Starliner uses to maneuver through space – that they don’t fully understand at the moment.
NASA initially gave the impression that Starliner could only spend up to 45 days in space based on the spacecraft’s battery and how long it was certified by NASA to last in orbit. But now, NASA is hinting that the mission will likely last longer, since the battery seems to be holding up okay and they plan to certify it for an additional 45 days. (For future flights, Starliner is supposed to last up to six months in orbit).
Engineers have been running a bunch of tests and analyses to figure out why these glitches cropped up once Starliner reached space. And on Friday, NASA announced that engineers would be conducting an additional set of tests at NASA’s White Sands facility. There, they’ll fire up a test thruster on the ground, similar to the ones Starliner uses, to see if they can replicate how it might behave in space. Once those tests are over, then they’ll figure out a plan for landing, Stich said.
None of this sounds very good, especially given the stakes. There’s always a lot of fuss around the launch of a spacecraft, but returning to Earth is just as risky, if not more so. It’s very possible that these issues are not showstoppers, but being buttoned up ahead of the return is still key.
It hasn’t helped that NASA and Boeing have been dropping substantial updates about the program at odd hours, including a blog post at 8 p.m. on June 21. Nothing screams “bad news” louder than a Friday night news dump. But another big problem is that NASA and Boeing can’t seem to answer a key question: Is Starliner safe to bring the crew home at this very moment?
When asked this question on Friday, Stich gave a lengthy answer full of jargon in lieu of a solid “yes” or “no.” (A fun detail I learned when reporting my book is that the Shuttle astronauts had an alternative meaning for NASA: Never A Straight Answer.) It seems that NASA is adverse to saying anything definitively, and the end result is just going to be more confusion. — Loren Grush
On Thursday, US Space Command confirmed that a decommissioned Russian satellite broke up in orbit quite suddenly, spewing pieces of debris out into space. Commercial space tracking company LeoLabs said it is monitoring roughly 180 pieces of debris and that the number will probably increase in the coming days.
It’s unclear exactly why the satellite broke apart. It’s possible that some part within the satellite exploded, which has happened to failing spacecraft before. Russia also caused a bunch of headaches in 2021, when it destroyed one of its own dead satellites with a missile launched from Earth (there’s no confirmation that’s what happened here).
Still, debris generated from breakups like this are dangerous, as the fragments zoom through orbit at thousands of miles an hour, threatening to collide with other healthy spacecraft. As a precaution, astronauts on board the International Space Station sheltered in their respective docked spacecraft after the breakup — in case they needed to quickly detach from the ISS and head home. So Williams and Wilmore sheltered inside Starliner.
The astronauts were ultimately cleared to go back into the space station after about an hour when it was determined the debris didn’t pose a threat. “It was great learning for us while we’re docked at the space station to have this contingency come up,” said Stich, the NASA program manager.
Three things you need to know today:
• SpaceX’s value has soared to a record $210 billion.
• Amazon’s delaying the launch of its internet-from-space satellites.
• SpaceX is getting $843 million to guide the International Space Station to a fiery end.
Stuck stress
NASA doesn’t want you to say the Boeing Starliner astronauts are “stranded” in space.That was the very loud message the space agency and Boeing projected to media on Friday, when officials held a conference call about the delayed Starliner mission currently docked to the International Space Station.
No, astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams are not stuck in space and yes, they will come home – eventually, NASA and Boeing officials said.
But the vague answers didn’t provide us with much clarity about how severe Starliner’s situation really is.
What was supposed to be roughly a week-long test flight to the ISS is now probably going to last months, as NASA and Boeing continue to delay Starliner’s return to Earth. They say they want to better understand a series of technical issues the spacecraft experienced since launching June 5 on its first crewed test flight to space.
Confusion surrounding the delays prompted headlines proclaiming that Wilmore and Williams are “stuck” or “stranded” in space and that Starliner couldn’t bring the crew home. NASA and Boeing admonished reporters for the phrasing, but still haven’t given a time frame for the crew’s return.
“I want to make it very clear that Butch and Suni are not stranded in space,” Steve Stich, a NASA program manager overseeing the mission, said. “Our plan is to continue to return them on Starliner and return them home.”
Mark Nappi, a Boeing vice president also overseeing the mission, remarked how “painful” it was to read all the headlines and stories he’s been getting on his Google alerts.
So what is ultimately going on? NASA and Boeing say that Starliner is fully capable of bringing Williams and Wilmore back to Earth in the case of an emergency. They say they want to keep Starliner in space for as long as they can to better analyze a series of helium leaks and issues with the vehicle’s thrusters – tiny engines that Starliner uses to maneuver through space – that they don’t fully understand at the moment.
NASA initially gave the impression that Starliner could only spend up to 45 days in space based on the spacecraft’s battery and how long it was certified by NASA to last in orbit. But now, NASA is hinting that the mission will likely last longer, since the battery seems to be holding up okay and they plan to certify it for an additional 45 days. (For future flights, Starliner is supposed to last up to six months in orbit).
Engineers have been running a bunch of tests and analyses to figure out why these glitches cropped up once Starliner reached space. And on Friday, NASA announced that engineers would be conducting an additional set of tests at NASA’s White Sands facility. There, they’ll fire up a test thruster on the ground, similar to the ones Starliner uses, to see if they can replicate how it might behave in space. Once those tests are over, then they’ll figure out a plan for landing, Stich said.
None of this sounds very good, especially given the stakes. There’s always a lot of fuss around the launch of a spacecraft, but returning to Earth is just as risky, if not more so. It’s very possible that these issues are not showstoppers, but being buttoned up ahead of the return is still key.
It hasn’t helped that NASA and Boeing have been dropping substantial updates about the program at odd hours, including a blog post at 8 p.m. on June 21. Nothing screams “bad news” louder than a Friday night news dump. But another big problem is that NASA and Boeing can’t seem to answer a key question: Is Starliner safe to bring the crew home at this very moment?
When asked this question on Friday, Stich gave a lengthy answer full of jargon in lieu of a solid “yes” or “no.” (A fun detail I learned when reporting my book is that the Shuttle astronauts had an alternative meaning for NASA: Never A Straight Answer.) It seems that NASA is adverse to saying anything definitively, and the end result is just going to be more confusion. — Loren Grush
Bad breakup
While questions abound about Starliner’s capability to return home, the vehicle did become something of a safe haven last week during an unexpected space debris event.On Thursday, US Space Command confirmed that a decommissioned Russian satellite broke up in orbit quite suddenly, spewing pieces of debris out into space. Commercial space tracking company LeoLabs said it is monitoring roughly 180 pieces of debris and that the number will probably increase in the coming days.
It’s unclear exactly why the satellite broke apart. It’s possible that some part within the satellite exploded, which has happened to failing spacecraft before. Russia also caused a bunch of headaches in 2021, when it destroyed one of its own dead satellites with a missile launched from Earth (there’s no confirmation that’s what happened here).
Still, debris generated from breakups like this are dangerous, as the fragments zoom through orbit at thousands of miles an hour, threatening to collide with other healthy spacecraft. As a precaution, astronauts on board the International Space Station sheltered in their respective docked spacecraft after the breakup — in case they needed to quickly detach from the ISS and head home. So Williams and Wilmore sheltered inside Starliner.
The astronauts were ultimately cleared to go back into the space station after about an hour when it was determined the debris didn’t pose a threat. “It was great learning for us while we’re docked at the space station to have this contingency come up,” said Stich, the NASA program manager.
