The astronauts stranded on the International Space Station are still not able to come home, Nasa has said.
Two astronauts went to the space station almost 50 days ago as part of a test of Boeing’s Starliner capsule. But the spacecraft was plagued by problems both before and after the launch – and since then engineers have delayed the return until they can understand what went wrong.
That work is still not finished and the space agency cannot give a date for them to come back, it said on an update on Wednesday.
Test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were supposed to visit the orbiting lab for about a week and return in mid-June, but thruster failures and helium leaks on Boeing‘s new Starliner capsule prompted Nasa and Boeing to keep them up longer.
Nasa’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich said mission managers were not ready to announce a return date.
“We’ll come home when we’re ready,” said Stich, adding that the goal is to bring Wilmore and Williams back aboard Starliner. But he admitted that the space agency is considering other options – which could include bringing the pair home on a different spacecraft.
Nasa had initially said that the spacecraft would be safe for a 45 day stay, though the astronauts have now been in space for longer than that. The space agency has since said it would be possible to stay for twice that – and that, when the spacecraft goes into full usage, it is approved to stay for as long as 21 days.
Engineers last week completed testing on a spare thruster in the New Mexico desert to try to understand what went wrong during docking and to prepare for the trip home.
Five thrusters failed as the capsule approached the space station on June 6, a day after lift-off. Four have since been reactivated.
After the space shuttles retired, Nasa hired private companies for astronaut rides to the space station, paying Boeing and SpaceX billions of dollars.
This was the Boeing‘s first test flight with a crew aboard. SpaceX has been ferrying astronauts since 2020.
Additional reporting by agencies
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