Boeing Starliner return delayed again for spacewalks, study of spacecraft issues (2024)

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Boeing Starliner return delayed again for spacewalks, study of spacecraft issues? ›

Now they aren't expected to make the trip back to Earth until at least early July, following two scheduled spacewalks and continued assessments of reported issues on the spacecraft, Boeing announced in a June 21 update.

Officials suspect that heat from all the thruster action at docking caused the shutdown. The one faulty thruster has been turned off and is not an issue for the return trip, Boeing said. The capsule launched June 5 with one small helium leak, but four more leaks sprung up by the time it reached the space station.

Extra testing still remains ahead of undocking, team officials emphasized; Starliner experienced helium leaks and thruster issues that extended its Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission from an originally planned 10 days after launching June 5.

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams aboard, approaches the International Space Station for docking high above the Pacific Ocean on June 6, 2024. Hardware problems with Starliner have indefinitely delayed the astronauts' return to Earth.

Once the astronaut returns to Earth, they are immediately forced to readjust again, back to Earth's gravity, and can experience issues standing, stabilizing their gaze, walking, and turning. For their safety, returning astronauts are often placed in a chair immediately upon return to Earth.

A 21st Century Space Capsule

The Starliner has an innovative, weldless structure and is reusable up to 10 times with a six-month turnaround time. It also features wireless internet and tablet technology for crew interfaces.

Starliner's first uncrewed ISS test in 2019 failed to reach its destination due to computer glitches. Dozens of such issues and the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 delayed the second uncrewed test to 2022.

The spacecraft sports no toilet—unlike Crew Dragon—and has about the same livable volume as an SUV, making for a relatively cozy rise to and from orbit. It has physical hand controls and switches for the astronauts to control the spacecraft, unlike the touch screens used inside Crew Dragon.

Instead, problems plaguing Boeing's Starliner mean they can't return. Two astronauts are stuck in space because Boeing's Starliner can't make the journey back to Earth. Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita "Suni" Williams blasted off on 5 June in Starliner's first mission to orbit carrying astronauts.

Everything in our solar system revolves around the sun, so objects are never in a fixed location. That means spaceships can't take a direct path to their destination; they need to go in a spiral so that they eventually cross paths with the orbit of the planet or space station they're trying to reach.

Have astronauts floated away in space? ›

Thankfully, an astronaut being irretrievably stranded away from their spacecraft has never happened before. The first astronaut to float away from the safety of their ship without a tether was Bruce McCandless, who reached 320 feet away from the Challenger space shuttle on February 7, 1984.

Today, astronauts on the space shuttle eat food in much the same way as they do here on Earth. In a low-gravity environment, food and drinks would simply float away if they weren't handled correctly. To combat this problem, food is carefully contained and drinks are packaged as dehydrated powders.

But the cold in space is only in those few particles that hardly ever collide with your body. Therefore, your body is not transferring any heat to anything as there is virtually nothing there. Now, it is true that your body will cool. However, the only way it does this in space is by a process called radiation.

> For example, calculations based on the speed of the ISS suggest that an astronaut would age roughly 0.007 seconds less for every six months in space compared to someone on Earth. For a year, this discrepancy is still less than a second – a tiny fraction undetectable in our daily lives but monumental in physics.

Bones and muscles weaken

If you stay for a long time in space, your muscles and bones will weaken, primarily in the legs and lower back. Gravity always acts on you while you're on the earth, so even if you're not really conscious of resisting gravity, you're always using the muscles of your lower body.

Your blood and body fluids would boil and then freeze because there is little or no air pressure. Your tissues (skin, heart, other internal organs) would expand because of the boiling fluids. You would face extreme changes in temperature: Shade: -148°F (-100°C); Sunlight: 248°F (120°C)

Grissom's flight was the first with an explosive hatch. Grissom insisted the hatch blew by itself when it hit the surface. Subsequent recovery of the spacecraft indicated that the plunger was not pushed and the frame was dented, suggesting a short circuit occurred.

For NASA missions to the ISS it will carry four passengers and a small amount of cargo. The Starliner capsule uses a weldless, spun-formed structure and is reusable up to 10 times with a six-month turnaround time. Boeing plans to alternate between two reusable crew modules for all planned Starliner missions.

Boeing Starliner Spacecraft Completes Successful Launch - Jun 5, 2024.

The latest examination of the Boeing 737 Max 9 plane comes after the company has dealt with years of critiques about its manufacturing process, including a December 2021 Senate report that called out chronic understaffing and the downplaying of concerns raised by engineers in the company.