Boeing Fixes Most Starliner Issues, NASA Plans Crew Return

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich spoke at the Crew-10 mission briefing today. He said Boeing has fixed 70% of the problems from Starliner’s last crewed test flight. The company is now working on a helium leak found during the mission. Boeing will send a team to White Sands later this year to test the thrusters.

The SpaceX Crew-10 team will launch on March 13 at 8:48 AM Beijing time from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. They expect to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) around 11 PM that day. At the ISS, Expedition 72 held a ceremony where NASA astronaut Suni Williams passed command to Russian astronaut Alexey Ovchinin.

NASA plans to bring two U.S. astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, back home after Crew-10 arrives. These astronauts have been stuck on the ISS for nearly 10 months due to Starliner delays. This will keep the U.S. crew size normal. Four astronauts will return to Earth on SpaceX’s Dragon: NASA’s Nick Hague (leader), Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, and Russia’s Aleksandr Gorbunov.

Stich added that the ISS has limited docking spots this year. This makes it hard to schedule Starliner’s next mission. NASA will decide if it happens late this year or early next year.