NASA fixes helium leaks after Starliner launch

The mission of the first crew to launch into space on Boeing's Starliner is facing numerous problems caused by helium leaks that, at best, could jeopardize the flight's seven-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS), at worst – well, we'd rather not talk about that.

The launch of the Starliner from KSC on Wednesday morning (June 5, 2024) local time was beautiful and marked the first time since the Mercury missions of the early 1960s that a crew launched into space on an Atlas family rocket.

This was a big and long-awaited moment for NASA and Boeing and is seen as an important milestone in bringing the U.S. agency closer to its goal of launching astronauts into low Earth orbit on two independent commercial spacecraft.

The two crew members, veteran NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, are on board to help verify that the spacecraft is functioning as designed by testing the environmental control system, displays and control systems, maneuvering the engines, and more.

After docking with the ISS, they will join the Expedition 71 crew, which consists of NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Matt Dominick, Tracy Dyson and Jeanette Epps, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin and Oleg Kononenko.

For Boeing, the once-vaunted aerospace giant, the first launch of astronauts aboard the Starliner was a response to safety concerns about its 737 work plane and an opportunity to show that the company had overcome a series of development problems and delays with its Starliner.

Helium leaks have frequently caused delays in the U.S. Space Shuttle program and have also occasionally caused potentially life-threatening problems with systems on the International Space Station and other manned spacecraft, including the Russian Soyuz capsule.

Shortly after Starliner reached orbit, mission controllers announced that they planned to repair two more helium leaks in addition to the one discovered before launch.
Helium provides the pressure in the propulsion system, which is used for maneuvering and the braking effect needed to return the astronauts to Earth. A helium leak discovered before launch delayed the mission by several weeks, but the flight was deemed safe.

However, officials said the spacecraft's configuration was stable and teams were moving forward with a plan to rendezvous and dock with the ISS at about 12:15 p.m. EDT (4:15 p.m. UTC) today, about 24 hours after launch.

NASA awarded Boeing a $4.2 billion contract in 2014 to complete development of the Starliner spacecraft, with the goal of flying astronauts in the capsule starting in 2017. The company first announced the spacecraft that later became the Starliner, then known as CST-100, at the 2010 Farnborough International Airshow (FIA).

At the time, Boeing officials said they hoped to have the CST-100 spacecraft operational by 2015. But Congress initially refused to approve the funding NASA said it needed to support the development of new commercial crew vehicles after the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011.

Boeing has struggled with numerous technical problems, including a major fuel leak during ground tests, an aborted unmanned test flight to the space station in 2019, and further delays due to valve corrosion.

However, a test flight in 2022 met all of Boeing's key goals and set the stage for the crew test flight. But in 2023, it was discovered that Boeing had mistakenly used flammable tape around bundles of cables inside the Starliner spacecraft, leading to another schedule delay while it was fixed.

In addition, during testing, engineers discovered that they had to redesign a component of the capsule's parachute system, which has postponed the crew's test flight until this year.

Fortunately for US taxpayers, the contract between NASA and Boeing is a fixed-price contract. Nevertheless, the delays have already cost Boeing nearly $1.5 billion out of its own pocket.

The Starliner's crew flight test comes more than four years after SpaceX launched its first astronaut missions with its Crew Dragon spacecraft. Both companies received multibillion-dollar contracts from NASA to provide transporters for its astronauts as part of the Commercial Crew Program.