CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Boeing has announced that it Astronaut Capsule Now that tests of the spare thrusters have been completed on Earth, they will be tested in orbit.
of Starliner Capsule It has been docking He had been at the International Space Station since June 6th. NASA test pilot The launch was scheduled for mid-June, but thruster failure and a helium leak caused NASA and Boeing to postpone the launch.
Officials said Thursday that a return date for astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams has not yet been set. Engineers will first disassemble the thrusters that were test fired in New Mexico over the past few weeks, then analyze the data before giving Starliner the go-ahead to return.
“We’ve collected a tremendous amount of data on the thrusters that will help us better understand what’s going on during flight,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said in a statement.
According to NASA, the test successfully replicated the conditions the capsule’s thrusters would experience before docking with the space station, as well as the conditions they would experience after undocking and during descent.
This will be Starliner’s first test flight with a crew on board.
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