The crew of the Boeing CST-100 Starliner has received promising news regarding their return to Earth. Recent ground tests of the spacecraft’s thrusters, which have been stranded in space since early June, have been successfully completed. Boeing and NASA were awaiting the results of these tests to begin planning the Starliner’s journey back home.
The update indicated that the ground testing of the Starliner’s Reaction Control System (RCS) thruster at the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico is finished, and teams are now focusing on reviewing the data. The tests aimed to investigate the degradation of the thrusters to understand why some were deactivated during the flight and to assess the impacts of potentially reactivating them.
Officials noted that “de-selected” refers to thrusters that ceased functioning. During the launch, the tanks holding helium, which regulates the thrusters, experienced leaks, causing several delays. Despite having 70 hours of helium onboard—considerably more than the seven hours needed—the officials mentioned that while the craft could technically return now, they are not yet prepared for it to do so.
In their most recent update, NASA and Boeing suggested that a return flight could occur by the end of this month. However, the timeline has since become less specific: “Boeing and NASA engineers will proceed with thruster disassembly and inspections, and move forward with finalizing flight rationale in support of readiness reviews for Starliner’s nominal return to Earth with commander Butch Wilmore and pilot Suni Williams in the coming weeks.”