By: Benjamin  He

The International Space Station(The ISS), has become home to two astronauts who were originally planned to return back to Earth a couple of weeks ago. Their mission was to test Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft.

The astronauts (Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams), need to stay on the station for a bit longer than anticipated, due to the spacecraft’s faulty thrusters. On Friday, officials reassured the public that no astronauts were “stuck” or “trapped” anywhere.

“The crew is not in any danger.” Mark Nappi, the program manager at Boeing for Starliner, said during a news conference on Friday. Steve Stich, the manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, added that “the vehicle at [the] station is in good shape” and that nobody was stranded in space.

While docking, five of the Starliner 28’s maneuvering jets behaved “oddly” whilst approaching the station. The good news is that four out of five of the thrusters now seem to be working properly. The last faulty thruster will not be employed during the trip home. Former tragic events in space(like the Challenger and the Columbia space shuttles) have caused NASA to adopt a much more cautious and vigilant lifestyle over the years, hence the hyper analysis of the thrusters.

“It would be irresponsible for us, if we have time and we want to do more, not to do it,”
Mr. Nappi said of the thruster analysis.

At the start of next week, ground tests will be conducted at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico using thrusters identical to the ones used onboard the Starliner 28. To completely understand why the thrusters were acting strangely aboard the spacecraft, the engineers will attempt to recreate what the thrusters did in space to study the faulty ones.

“Then we’ll give engineers a chance to go look at that thruster,” Mr. Stitch said. “This will be the real opportunity to examine a thruster, just like we’ve had in space.”