NASA test pilots Suni Williams, a Needham native, and Butch Wilmore answered questions from reporters on Friday about their unexpectedly long stay aboard the International Space Station.Williams and Wilmore flew up to the orbiting outpost on a test flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule in early June. What should have been a weeklong test flight for the pair will now last more than eight months.Their test flight quickly encountered thruster failures and helium leaks so serious that NASA kept the capsule parked at the station for weeks before the agency decided to bring it down to Earth empty. “We were up in the cupola and we were watching our spaceship, you know, fly away at that point in time,” Williams said. “It was good we had some extra activities, you know, of course, we’re very knowledgeable about Starliner. So it was, it was obvious, you know, what was happening at each moment.”Wilmore and Williams will instead return in a SpaceX spacecraft in February. In the meantime, Williams will become the commander of the ISS, starting in a few weeks. “We’re both Navy. We’ve both been on deployments,” said Williams. “We’re not surprised when deployments get changed.”The decision to remove the crew from the vital landing portion of the test flight adds to the safety concerns plaguing the company on its airplane side. Boeing had counted on Starliner’s first crew trip to revive the troubled program after years of delays and ballooning costs. The company had insisted Starliner was safe based on all the recent thruster tests both in space and on the ground. Retired Navy captains with previous long-duration spaceflight experience, Wilmore, 61, and Williams, 58, anticipated surprises when they accepted the shakedown cruise of a new spacecraft, although not quite to this extent.”When you push the edge of the envelope again and you do things with spacecraft that have never been done before, just like Starliner, you’re going to find some things,” said Wilmore. “And in this case, we found some things that we just could not get comfortable with, putting us back in the Starliner when we had other options.””This is the first time that we’ve had humans in space aboard Starliner and we did find stuff,” Williams said. “We made the right decisions and we’re here. And that’s how things go in this business.”So Wilmore and Williams will wait for SpaceX’s next taxi flight. It’s due to launch in late September with two astronauts instead of the usual four for a routine six-month stay. NASA yanked two other astronauts to make room for Wilmore and Williams on the return flight in late February. “We were very fortunate that we have the space station, and that we had the option to stay and we had the option to come back a different way if that’s what the data showed,” said Wilmore. “I think the data could have gotten there. We could have gotten to the point, I believe, where we could have returned on Starliner, but we just simply ran out of time.” Starliner’s woes began long before its latest flight.Bad software fouled the first test flight without a crew in 2019, prompting a do-over in 2022. Then parachute and other issues cropped up, including a helium leak in the capsule’s propellant system that nixed a launch attempt in May. The leak eventually was deemed to be isolated and small enough to pose no concern. But more leaks sprouted following liftoff, and five thrusters also failed. All but one of those small thrusters restarted in flight. But engineers remain perplexed as to why some thruster seals appear to swell, obstructing the propellant lines, then revert to their normal size.These 28 thrusters are vital. Besides needed for space station rendezvous, they keep the capsule pointed in the right direction at flight’s end as bigger engines steer the craft out of orbit. Coming in crooked could result in catastrophe.NASA went into its commercial crew program a decade ago wanting two competing U.S. companies ferrying astronauts in the post-shuttle era. Boeing won the bigger contract: more than $4 billion, compared with SpaceX’s $2.6 billion.With station supply runs already under its belt, SpaceX aced its first of now nine astronaut flights in 2020, while Boeing got bogged down in design flaws that set the company back more than $1 billion. NASA officials still hold out hope that Starliner’s problems can be corrected in time for another crew flight in another year or so. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

NEEDHAM, Mass. —

NASA test pilots Suni Williams, a Needham native, and Butch Wilmore answered questions from reporters on Friday about their unexpectedly long stay aboard the International Space Station.

Williams and Wilmore flew up to the orbiting outpost on a test flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule in early June. What should have been a weeklong test flight for the pair will now last more than eight months.

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Their test flight quickly encountered thruster failures and helium leaks so serious that NASA kept the capsule parked at the station for weeks before the agency decided to bring it down to Earth empty.

“We were up in the cupola and we were watching our spaceship, you know, fly away at that point in time,” Williams said. “It was good we had some extra activities, you know, of course, we’re very knowledgeable about Starliner. So it was, it was obvious, you know, what was happening at each moment.”

Wilmore and Williams will instead return in a SpaceX spacecraft in February. In the meantime, Williams will become the commander of the ISS, starting in a few weeks.

“We’re both Navy. We’ve both been on deployments,” said Williams. “We’re not surprised when deployments get changed.”

NASA via AP

The decision to remove the crew from the vital landing portion of the test flight adds to the safety concerns plaguing the company on its airplane side. Boeing had counted on Starliner’s first crew trip to revive the troubled program after years of delays and ballooning costs. The company had insisted Starliner was safe based on all the recent thruster tests both in space and on the ground.

Retired Navy captains with previous long-duration spaceflight experience, Wilmore, 61, and Williams, 58, anticipated surprises when they accepted the shakedown cruise of a new spacecraft, although not quite to this extent.

“When you push the edge of the envelope again and you do things with spacecraft that have never been done before, just like Starliner, you’re going to find some things,” said Wilmore. “And in this case, we found some things that we just could not get comfortable with, putting us back in the Starliner when we had other options.”

“This is the first time that we’ve had humans in space aboard Starliner and we did find stuff,” Williams said. “We made the right decisions and we’re here. And that’s how things go in this business.”

So Wilmore and Williams will wait for SpaceX’s next taxi flight. It’s due to launch in late September with two astronauts instead of the usual four for a routine six-month stay. NASA yanked two other astronauts to make room for Wilmore and Williams on the return flight in late February.

“We were very fortunate that we have the space station, and that we had the option to stay and we had the option to come back a different way if that’s what the data showed,” said Wilmore. “I think the data could have gotten there. We could have gotten to the point, I believe, where we could have returned on Starliner, but we just simply ran out of time.”

Starliner’s woes began long before its latest flight.

Bad software fouled the first test flight without a crew in 2019, prompting a do-over in 2022. Then parachute and other issues cropped up, including a helium leak in the capsule’s propellant system that nixed a launch attempt in May. The leak eventually was deemed to be isolated and small enough to pose no concern. But more leaks sprouted following liftoff, and five thrusters also failed.

All but one of those small thrusters restarted in flight. But engineers remain perplexed as to why some thruster seals appear to swell, obstructing the propellant lines, then revert to their normal size.

These 28 thrusters are vital. Besides needed for space station rendezvous, they keep the capsule pointed in the right direction at flight’s end as bigger engines steer the craft out of orbit. Coming in crooked could result in catastrophe.

NASA went into its commercial crew program a decade ago wanting two competing U.S. companies ferrying astronauts in the post-shuttle era. Boeing won the bigger contract: more than $4 billion, compared with SpaceX’s $2.6 billion.

With station supply runs already under its belt, SpaceX aced its first of now nine astronaut flights in 2020, while Boeing got bogged down in design flaws that set the company back more than $1 billion. NASA officials still hold out hope that Starliner’s problems can be corrected in time for another crew flight in another year or so.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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