NASA official acknowledges internal “disagreement” on safety of Starliner return

Enlarge / Boeing’s Starliner is seen atop an Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)

During a news conference on Wednesday, NASA officials for the first time publicly discussed divisions within the agency about whether the Starliner spacecraft is really reliable enough to return two veteran astronauts—Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams—back to Earth from the International Space Station.

The space agency also confirmed key elements exclusively reported by Ars over the last week, chiefly that NASA has quietly been working for weeks with SpaceX on a potential rescue mission for Wilmore and Williams, that the Crew-9 mission launch has been delayed to September 24 to account for this possibility, and that Starliner is unable to undock autonomously with the current software configuration on the vehicle.

The chief of space human spaceflight operations for NASA, former astronaut Ken Bowersox, said no final decisions have been made on how Wilmore and Williams return to Earth. He said there were reasonable disagreements among engineers at NASA, which is the customer for the spaceflight, and Boeing, which developed and operates Starliner, about the viability of the 28 reaction control system thrusters that are used for delicate maneuvering and pointing of the vehicle.