Lessons Learned from Challenger and Columbia Guide Starliner Decisions

NASA continues to analyze data about Starliner’s propulsion system before deciding if the Boeing spacecraft is safe enough to bring two NASA astronauts back to Earth from the International Space Station. Last week the agency said they would make a decision in mid-August, but today acknowledged it would slip to later in the month while stressing there is no fixed timeline. Safety is paramount and they’ll take whatever time is needed to make the best decision based on input from many sources, a lesson learned from past tragedies.

During a media telecon today, the head of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, former astronaut Ken Bowersox, and the chief of NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance, Russ DeLoach, explained the decision-making process and why it’s proceeding more slowly than many expected. A mission that was supposed to end after about 10 days is still in progress more than two months later with no date for when the crew will return.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams launched on June 5 on a test flight of Boeing’s Starliner commercial crew spacecraft. The plan was to dock with the ISS, spend about eight days there and return to Earth as the final step in certifying Starliner for routine flights. During the one-day trip to the ISS, however, five thrusters went off-line and four helium leaks developed in addition to one that was discovered before launch. Four of the five thrusters resumed operation before docking, but the question is why software “deselected” them in the first place. Tests show the helium leaks are stable and there’s more than enough helium to execute the deorbit burn, but the thruster performance is perplexing.

The thrusters are in the Service Module, which separates from the Crew Module during reentry and burns up in the atmosphere. The Service Module is needed for Starliner to depart the ISS and maneuver into the correct position to put the Crew Module on the right trajectory to safely enter and transit Earth’s atmosphere and land at the designated spot.

Boeing and NASA have been working together since the thruster malfunctions to determine what went wrong and if they can safely return the crew. Ground and in-orbit tests have convinced Boeing the answer is yes, but NASA is seeking a broad range of expertise. By casting the net widely and allowing many voices to be heard, they are striving to avoid mistakes made in the past.

Asked today about how the process differs from the time of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger and 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia tragedies, DeLoach explained the governance structure is quite different. Three “Technical Authorities” were created to provide independent input instead of relying only on the program manager to make decisions.

As Chief of Safety and Mission Assurance, DeLoach is one of three. The others are the Chief Engineer and the Chief Health and Medical Officer. They have personnel embedded in the teams working on the Starliner issues. He added that he personally is “hyper-focused on the concept of combating organizational silence” and ensuring people with dissenting opinions can be heard. That’s one of the reasons this is taking longer.

“We did not have the governance structure that we have today with Technical Authorities. So at that time [of Challenger and Columbia] the program managers pretty much had near unilateral decision making. And so if there were views that maybe a path we were taking was not correct there was really no strong additional authority to step in and say ‘wait a minute.’

“And then I think the other thing is, I’ll say, for me, personally, I’ve been very hyper-focused lately on this concept of combating organizational silience. If you look at both, unfortunately, Challenger and Columbia, you can see cases where people had the right data or a valid position to put forward, but the environment just didn’t allow it, and I think we’ve worked a lot harder these days in sensitizing everyone to making sure that we have the right environment where people with different positions can bring them forward.

“I recognize that that may mean at times we don’t move very fast because we’re getting everything out. And I think you can kind of see that at play here, where I think some people are like ‘hey, let’s get on with it.’ But it really is part of that lesson that we learned is that you need to have equivalent technical authorities outside the program and we need to be very careful that everybody’s, everybody’s perspective is shared.”  — Russ DeLoach

Bowersox said there were avenues to express concerns in the past, but this new structure “raises the volume” on inputs from safety and engineering experts and “gives us a formal way to encourage and to analyze and make a decision on a dissenting opinion.”

Bowersox has personal experience with how spaceflight missions can abruptly change. He was aboard the ISS on February 1, 2003 when space shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry, killing six of his NASA astronaut colleagues and Israeli Air Force pilot Ilan Ramon. NASA and Roscosmos worked together to return Bowersox, Don Pettit (who is about to launch to the ISS again next month), and Nikolai Budarin on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in May 2003, two months after they were supposed to return on space shuttle Atlantis.

Soyuz was the only spacecraft able to ferry crews to and from the ISS until the shuttle returned to flight in July 2005 and again after the shuttle program was terminated in 2011 until SpaceX’s Crew Dragon made its first flight in 2020. The reliance on a single type of spacecraft — that fortunately did not experience any major anomalies during those periods of time — was a major factor in NASA’s decision to contract with two companies, SpaceX and Boeing, to build two new ISS crew transportation vehicles for this decade of ISS operations. NASA wants to ensure “dissimilar redundancy” so if one is grounded for any reason, they still have the other.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon now routinely transports astronauts not only as part of the regular ISS international crew rotations sponsored by NASA, but private astronauts both to the ISS and on other orbital missions.

Boeing’s Starliner is still waiting to be certified for operational missions. Successful completion of this Crew Flight Test is the prerequisite and NASA already has said the first operational mission will be delayed at least to August 2025 whether or not they deem this spacecraft safe to bring Butch and Suni home.

Joe Acaba, Chief of the Astronaut Office, assured everyone today that Butch and Suni are fine, doing productive work on the ISS, and were well aware their mission might be extended before they launched. If NASA decides Starliner is not safe to bring them home, they’ll remain on the ISS until February 2025 and return with Crew-9 on a SpaceX Dragon. That would make it an 8-month mission, “within our standard long-duration time frame” for ISS flights.  They also knew the risks. They are well informed on the discussions taking place and relying on the team on the ground to make the decision, not expressing a preference themselves. “They’ll do what we ask them to do and that’s their job as astronauts.”

When ready, Bowersox will chair a Flight Readiness Review to hear from technical and safety experts and decide if the analysis demonstrates Starliner’s propulsion system is up to the task. His decision could, and likely would, be sent up to higher levels in NASA including Associate Administrator Jim Free, the top civil servant in the agency, and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. Nelson told Ars Technica last week that he will make the final decision.

At last week’s briefing, NASA said a decision would be made in mid-August, but today Bowersox said the data analysis should be done by the “middle to end of next week” with the Flight Readiness Review “around the end of next week, potentially beginning of the following week,” which would be August 26.

“I know everybody would like a date. We’ve got some working dates, but I know that we need to maintain that flexibility so we make sure we’re ready for that meeting. We don’t want to come to that meeting before we’ve had a chance to process all the information. We’ve got time available before we bring Starliner home and we want to use that time wisely.” — Ken Bowersox

When Starliner launched, NASA said it could only remain at the ISS for 45 days because of the lifetime of the batteries in the Crew Module. Subsequently, NASA has said the batteries are fine and they were extended for another 45 days. According to NASA, the clock started when Starliner docked to the ISS on June 6, so that would make it September 2 although conceivably they could extend it again.

Bowersox made clear that NASA remains committed to having two dissimilar crew transportation systems. “Our intent is to keep pressing to have two providers. We’ve got two very good companies and we want to develop two strong and capable spacecraft. We think we still have a very good chance of doing that, but the answer is always in the data, right? That’s why we’re doing this mission. We’re going to analyze the data and we’ll be driven in our next decisions by that data.”

As with last week’s briefing, no representative from Boeing was present.  Asked how NASA and Boeing are getting along, Bowersox said he has “tremendous respect for Boeing and the Boeing team” and it has “grown through this process.”  Boeing is “100 percent confident” in Starliner and is working in partnership with NASA.

NASA repeated today that Starliner is safe to return Butch and Suni to Earth in case of an emergency.