international space station
Washington: The return of two astronauts of the US space agency NASA from the International Space Station has already been delayed by more than a month. They will remain on the International Space Station until engineers fix the problems in the astronauts’ Boeing ‘capsule’. This information was given by officials on Thursday. Test pilots Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams were supposed to stay in the space laboratory for about a week and return in mid-June, but NASA and Boeing have had to keep them there for longer due to a problem in the ‘thruster’ and helium leak in Boeing’s new Starliner capsule.
There was a problem with five thrusters
Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said mission managers are not ready to announce a return date. Engineers completed testing on a spare thruster in the New Mexico desert last week to figure out what went wrong during docking and prepare for the return trip to Earth. Five thrusters malfunctioned as the capsule approached the space station on June 6, a day after departure. Four have since been restarted.
Private companies are working
Since the space shuttles went out of service, NASA has hired private companies to ferry astronauts to the space station, paying billions of dollars to Boeing and SpaceX. This was Boeing’s first test flight with a crew on board. SpaceX has been carrying humans to space since 2020. (AP)
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