Projected to last only days, the first crewed test flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft with two astronauts onboard faces uncertainty with no exact return to Earth announced.
NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager, Steve Stich has said that the US space agency is considering extending the duration of Starliner's mission from 45 days to 90 days, CNN reported.
Officials have repeatedly hinted that the Starliner, which faced issues with helium leaks and thruster outages heading to the International Space Station in early June, will be safe to bring astronauts including indian-origin Sunita 'Suni' Williams and Butch Wilmore home.
On Friday, Stich said that NASA is considering extending the maximum length of Starliner's mission from 45 days to 90 days and there is no firm return date on the horizon, according to CNN report.
Addressing a briefing on Friday, the NASA official said, "We're just looking at the timeline to execute (the test in New Mexico) and then review the data." He further said, "And that's what's really the long pole, I would say, determining a landing date."
Stich added, "We're not in a rush to come home."
Part of that desired extension is due to the ground tests that Boeing and NASA plan to conduct in New Mexico, seeking to better understand why some of the Starliner's thrusters unexpectedly failed during the first leg of its journey.
Stich and Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager of the Commercial Crew Program for Boeing, also said that engineers are still not certain about the reason behind the Starliner's problems.
Nappi said that part of the aim is conducting the ground tests while the vehicle is still in space is to try to whittle down possible reasons why the thrusters malfunctioned.
Mark Nappi said, "So, if (the test in New Mexico) comes back and gives us all the answers, then we can just undock and come home."
He added, "If it comes back and says, 'Here's 80 per cent of the answer. And if you just run one more docked hot fire (test on the Starliner in orbit), then you can get 100 per cent of the answers' -- then we want (Starliner) to be there so that we can get that information."
Meanwhile, Williams and Wilmore have integrated with the rest of the crew currently aboard the International Space Station and are conducting routine tasks.
Several more helium leaks were identified while the craft was heading to the International Space Station, along with the thruster issues. The Starliner's service module, a cylindrical attachment at the bottom of the spacecraft that provides much of the vehicle's power during flight, faced several issues, CNN reported.
As per the design, the service module will not survive the return to Earth. The module is jettisoned and destroyed as the Starliner spacecraft reenters the atmosphere and that's the reason why Boeing and NASA teams then opted to leave the Starliner spacecraft safely docked with the space station while they worked to learn as much as possible about those issues.
It is not clear yet whether NASA will extend the maximum mission length to 90 days. Stich said officials must clear the battery life of the Starliner for that purpose. Although he noted that the batteries are being recharged at the space station, they should operate the same way after 90 days as they will for the first 45 days.
The spaceflight industry frequently experiences cost overruns, delays and unmet deadlines. However, Boeing has faced challenges that have stood out, particularly when the Starliner program is directly compared with SpaceX's Crew Dragon, CNN reported.
Meanwhile, Flight Engineer Alexander Grebenkin worked throughout the day inventorying medical kits and cleaning fans inside the Rassvet module and Station Commander Oleg Kononenko replaced thermal components in Roscosmos' life support hardware.
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