Boeing Starliner: Why are astronauts still in space?

NASA stated that flight engineers wanted to study the spacecraft to get to the origin of the malfunctions before it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere. This is because the crew capsule will parachute to Earth, but the Starliner's faulty lower “service module” will burn up upon reentry, meaning some information about what happened will be lost.

The space agency stressed that the astronauts were not stranded and that the Starliner was certified to return to Earth in the event of an emergency on the International Space Station.

What happens next is subject to high-level review by NASA to decide what to do next.

The sequence of events raises questions about whether the launch should have gone ahead despite the leak.

Dr. Adam Baker, president of Rocket Engineering, a British company that specializes in rocket propulsion systems, says he understands why the rocket was launched, but says it would have been better to get to the cause of the leak and fix it. .

“There is a danger of trying to make things too perfect, and it ends up taking too long and too expensive, and as a result, public and political support disappears,” he said.

“But my feeling is that they probably didn't adequately take into account the worsening of the leak after launch. That's something NASA and Boeing probably should have done.”

This would have been very expensive, as it would have involved removing the rocket from the launch pad and removing the propulsion system from the spacecraft.

Another issue that needs to be reviewed by NASA is why these issues were not identified in any of the two previous unmanned flight tests of the Starliner vehicle, according to Dr. Simon Barber, a space scientist at the Open University.

“The problems we have seen in the past few weeks are not the kind we would have expected at this stage of the Starliner development program,” he says.

“The whole point of this was to test what putting astronauts in the control loop of a spacecraft could do in terms of performance. Instead, we seem to be dealing with more fundamental issues that should have already been resolved by now.”

Finally, for NASA, a crucial issue is determining the underlying cause of the helium leak and propulsion problems. Until they do, all analyzes of risks for the safe return of astronauts and any contingency plans will be incomplete, according to Dr. Barber.

“Unless the root cause is understood, they will have to make a return judgment based on incomplete information. If you do not fully understand the cause of any failure, you cannot say with certainty that you do not have a systemic problem that will affect not only the underlying payment system.” , but also on backup systems.

As a last resort, NASA and Boeing could return astronauts aboard SpaceX's Dragon capsule, which would be extremely embarrassing for Boeing. But we're not there yet, according to Dr. Becker.

“With new spacecraft, you have to expect the unexpected,” he says. “This is a completely expected bump in the road and I don't think it's a major concern, other than it needs to be analyzed and repaired before the crew's next flight.”