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Boeing's Starliner Faces an Indefinite Wait in Space While NASA Investigates Its Faults
The space agency has pushed back the spacecraft’s return to an unspecified date in July, to give it more time to look into the problems that beset the vehicle on its journey into orbit.
The announcement followed two days of long meetings to review the readiness of the spacecraft, developed by Boeing, to fly NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to Earth. The NASA update did not provide any information about deliberations during these meetings, but it is clear that the agency’s leaders were not able to get comfortable with all contingencies that Wilmore and Williams might encounter during a return flight to Earth, including safely undocking from the space station, maneuvering away, performing a de-orbit burn, separating the crew capsule from the service module, and then flying through the planet’s atmosphere before landing under parachutes in a New Mexico desert. “We are strategically using the extra time to clear a path for some critical station activities while completing readiness for Butch and Suni’s return on Starliner and gaining valuable insight into the system upgrades we will want to make for post-certification missions,” Stich said.
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