NASA acknowledged Wednesday that there was “tension” during a meeting with Boeing executives about retrieving two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station, but denied reports of a noisy confrontation.
The US space agency is turning to SpaceX to rescue astronauts due to safety concerns over Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which suffered a thruster malfunction and a helium leak while headed to the orbital outpost.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were launched in June, where they will remain for about a week, but they are now not expected to return until February 2025, when the SpaceX Crew-9 mission returns.
Boeing has publicly insisted it has full confidence in its spacecraft, but the absence of its officials at recent NASA press briefings has fueled speculation about differences.
According to sources cited by the New York Post, meetings between the two sides often devolved into shouting and arguments.
When asked about these claims, Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said, “Anytime you’re in a meeting of this scale where this type of decision is being made, there’s some tension in the room.”
“Boeing was confident in the model they had built that tried to predict the thruster degradation for the remainder of the flight,” he said, but “the NASA team could not agree with that because of uncertainties in the modeling.”
“I wouldn’t say it was a screaming meeting,” Stich told reporters. “It was a tense technical discussion in which both sides listened carefully to all the data.”
New clothes
Despite the long stay there, Wilmore and Williams are in good spirits and in touch with their families.
They are no longer relying on borrowed clothing because better-fitting suits were sent to them during recent resupply missions, NASA officials said.
The Starliner will depart the ISS on Friday evening, U.S. Eastern time, and land with the help of parachutes and airbags in the western United States on Saturday morning.
Immediately after separating from the dock, the spacecraft will execute a “breakout burn” with its thrusters to ensure it moves clear of the research station, before beginning its onward journey toward Earth.
Had the flight been crewed, the ship would have flown closer to the station to capture exterior views, but NASA deemed the risk of a collision was too great without astronauts onboard to manually steer the Starliner if necessary.
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