Space News reports, “Boeing executives said the company is making progress on containing the costs of its CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle, but offered few details on technical work getting the spacecraft ready for its next flight. In an April 23 earnings call to discuss the company’s first quarter financial results, Kelly Ortberg, president and chief executive of Boeing, cited Starliner as one of the company’s fixed-price programs where the company has improved cost management after serious overruns.”
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Reuters reports, “NASA said on Thursday it was moving toward certifying Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner for crewed flights later this year or by early 2026 after its inaugural mission to the International Space Station was marred by a system fault, forcing an extended stay. The agency is working with Boeing to resolve the Starliner’s faulty propulsion system, which caused its debut eight-day crewed mission to stretch into a nine-month stay in space for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.”
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Aviation Week reports, “NASA says it wants to stick with the Boeing CST-100 Starliner to give the space agency options in case the SpaceX Dragon system encounters problems. NASA last year had to lean on the SpaceX system when it experienced technical issues with Starliner during a Crew Flight Test (CFT) that turned a days-long mission into a months-long saga. The propulsion issues drove NASA to return the Boeing capsule to Earth uncrewed and make astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams part of the International Space Station (ISS) crew. They returned to Earth March 18along with NASA’s Crew-9 Dragon commander Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.”
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The Washington Post reports, “The two Boeing Starliner astronauts kept unexpectedly on the International Space Station since June have had their stay extended yet again because the next crew will arrive later than originally anticipated, NASA said this week. Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore and Sunita Williams were previously expected to return in February after spending several months longer in orbit than planned.”
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SPACE reports that Boeing’s Starliner had propulsion issues after launching on its first test mission with astronauts. Six weeks after the mission concluded, “NASA is still working on the issues that complicated the spacecraft’s first crewed test flight, agency officials said on Friday (Oct. 25).”
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The New York Times reports that Boeing’s Starliner “has finally come home, but the two NASA astronauts who traveled in it to the International Space Station in June remain in orbit. Because of problems with Starliner’s propulsion system during its approach to the space station in June, NASA officials decided not to put the astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, on Starliner for the return trip. They will spend an additional five months on the space station as part of the crew before coming back to Earth around February in a spacecraft built and managed by SpaceX.”
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The New York Times reports, “Leaving behind the two NASA astronauts it took to the International Space Station three months ago, Boeing’s troubled Starliner spacecraft is set to begin its return to Earth on Friday evening. Six hours after it undocks from the station, it is to parachute to a landing at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico. If bad weather or technical issues cause a delay, Starliner’s return could happen on Sept. 10, Sept. 14 or Sept. 18.”
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Ars Technica reports, “On Saturday NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore noticed some strange noises emanating from a speaker inside the Starliner spacecraft. ‘I’ve got a question about Starliner,’ Wilmore radioed down to Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston. ‘There’s a strange noise coming through the speaker… I don’t know what’s making it.’ Wilmore said he was not sure if there was some oddity in the connection between the station and the spacecraft causing the noise, or something else. He asked the flight controllers in Houston to see if they could listen to the audio inside the spacecraft. A few minutes later, Mission Control radioed back that they were linked via ‘hardline’ to listen to audio inside Starliner, which has now been docked to the International Space Station for nearly three months.”
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Aviation Week reports, “Following its decision to continue the Boeing CST-100 Starliner Crew Flight Test (CFT) without its crew for safety reasons, NASA on Aug. 29 set the spacecraft’s departure from the International Space Station (ISS) for no earlier than Sept. 6. Starliner’s undocking from the ISS is targeted for 6:04 p…”
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