Eight days into eight months - how NASA astronauts got stuck on the International Space Station...

[Music] when astronauts Sita Sunny Williams and Barry Butch Wilmore left Earth in June on an 8-day Mission they had to jettison their luggage to fit in some spare parts for the International Space Station to fit that gear on their spaceship they threw out their underwear before they left that wouldn't have been too bad but two astronauts from Boeing Starliner are now awaiting a decision on when they can return home from space after nine weeks on the International Space Station NASA now says mechanical issues with the Starliner could turn their planned 8-day Mission into eight months two astronauts part of Boeing Starliner stuck in space for the past couple of months are going to be stuck there until next year today after a formal review NASA determined that the Starliner is not safe enough to bring them back NASA has decided that Butch and sunny will return with crew nine next February uh and that Starliner uh will return uncrewed but rest assured the peer are not still going commando so they have most of their resources now they the resupply flight earli in ear in the month would have taken their baggage up so put it on a later flight as it were um just as you were doing with theay baggage like going to Europe and losing your B absolutely yeah exactly like that so we've got those things on board now they'll probably reassessed a little bit of the the resourcing they're putting onto those resupply flights Unfortunately they they had an issue with the um the urine recycler on the space station uh so they actually had to put a new pump on board for this flight that they went up on Starliner expected that they're only going to be up there for eight days so maybe it's not so critical eight months later it's looking like they might might want their clothes K I'm alixir Russell and today on the detail what went wrong to leave two astronauts stuck in space how they'll be getting back and why NASA isn't willing to take Boeing's word for it that the Starliner they left in would return them safely the decision to keep Butch and sunny aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is a result of a commitment to safety our core value is safety and it is our North Star that's Senator Bill Wilson NASA's administrator a former astronaut he trained and flew with the crew of the Space Shuttle Colombia that broke apart on a 2003 Mission Seven astronauts have died their families shattered the space program has been dealt a terrible blow the larger family of men and women in space exploration devastated and the country has been reminded how dangerous it is and that for all of American amica's technological genius it doesn't always work space flight is risky even at its safest and even at its most routine and a test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine what a weird thing to go in an 8 day Mission and it's like gillig Islands 3 out you're still there months later how would they have prepared for that so the the astronauts on on this Mission s Williams and Butch wmart they they very uh very highly trained astronauts they've flown many missions in the past um so they they'll be very prepared for a variety of eventualities I went to ockland University's space Institute to speak to senior research fellow Dr Ben Taylor Who's their spacecraft engineering lead he's also the head of a company that deploys technology in space to do things like clear up space debris and he's been closely following the fate of the two astronauts they basically trained for for as many eventualities as they got time for on the ground um and one of the things is you know potential issues with return vehicles or or other other problems in in launch that mean they're going to stay there a bit longer um you know the the ISS itself the space station is is very well equipped resources it's it's been running now for for decades it's a very well old machine let's say okay so they're not going to run out of food no plenty of resources on board and in fact there's there's very regular resupply flights there was one just the beginning of August uh sent up some some further supplies they've got another one coming up in October I believe uh as well as the you know the upcoming crew replacement Mission as well so it's it's quite a bustling station really okay so tell me what they will be doing now that their eight days is well and truly up so I'm sure there's a very long list of activities and tasks that need to be done on on the station there's uh a lot of Maintenance activities you know the replacement pumps for the toilets for instance great job need to replace those while Butch and sunny are on board they'll be doing Science Station maintenance um they'll execute the SpaceX 31 research and cargo Mission and we may have a couple space walks for them towards the end of their expedition um since they've been up there they've been a welcome set of Helping Hands they've already done about a 100 hours of work on 42 different experiments and they've helped us with some of the critical station maintenance that we've had on board yeah lot lot the day-to-day sort of routine of actually operating a very large space station in Earth orbit there's a lot of experiments happening on board the ISS so there's a lot of you know backlog of of things that need to happen to do people's experiments that are waiting for results on the ground so yeah General day-to-day activities we'll get back to life on the is and why hair ties of vital equipment and space But first the arrangement with Boeing's competitor Space X to take the astronauts home on the dragon X spaceship and what happens now with the abandoned Starliner crew n Mission will now configure Dragon for two crew members person provid seats for Butch and sunny to return NASA doesn't send its own spaceships on low earth orbit trips anymore but it's still needs to get its astronauts to the ISS it's awarded contracts worth billions to both Boeing the established and trusted Legacy provider and the new kid Elon musk's SpaceX but in the past four years SpaceX has launched 133 human space flight missions the styliner was Boeing's first manned flight to test the spaceship which is designed to be reused you know it's disappointing that uh that they're not coming home on Starliner but that's okay it's a test flight but it's more bad news for Boeing after what's been a horrible year for the company here's space commentator Leo enrite there was a saying in the airline business if it's not Bo I'm not going that's the sort of reputation that Boeing had back in the day they were the gold standard of safe uh airplanes and safe spaceships now as we know very tragically we've had a number of real disasters uh with their airlanes uh the Boeing Max the United Kingdom has joined the likes of Australia Germany and China and banned Boeing 737 Max 8s from the airspace the move follows the Ethiopian Airlines fatal accident in which a Boeing 737 max8 crashed shortly after take off that that is just a huge Scandal of enormous proportions and it put into perspective you know how safe is the stuff that Boeing is building now until today this was all to do with their airlanes nobody thought that there might be a problem with their spaceships most of what they're worried about I think is okay but it's a really really bad look it's it's not a good look I think Starliner is a very sophisticated spacecraft it's uh the majority of it is working uh very well um and I'm sure there's you know fixes to these these problems um I wouldn't anticipate that they're going to stop Flying it um I think actually NASA have reiterated that they they're looking forward to the next next flight opportunity Nessa has experienced trust in Boeing Senator Nelson how certain are you that Boeing will ever launch Starliner with a crew on board again 100% sort of Boeing did a great job building a model now the question is is that model good enough to predict performance for a crew um all the work we've done is really important also for bringing this vehicle back we want the vehicle to come back uncrewed it needs to land at the Whit Sands uh space Harbor which is where the opportunities are setting up in September and all the work that we've done both on the Nas and Boeing side give us confidence to bring the vehicle back it has to execute a do over at burn it has to do all the things we need it to do undocking from the space station safely so I think together we have worked toward that that part there was just a little disagreement in terms of the level of risk they had previous issues on their unmanned flight tests um they obviously had satisfied themselves NASA and Boeing that those problems have been fixed and now they're doing this first crude flight um in the process of doing this flight they're looking to sort stress test the vehicle a little bit so put it through its Paces before it then does its approach to the space station um obviously there's potential risk if something goes wrong that you're going to be you know um posing a risk to the space station so they do some of these early stage testing of the systems and checkouts um that's where they started to see some issues where the propulsion system um wasn't quite doing what was meant to be doing so the thrusters weren't firing quite efficiently some of them were being shut down uh they had some leaks in the pressurization system so having helium leaks in the system there so a variey of little problems they having on on the vehicle um as they were coming to this approach to the space station so yeah valves and thrusters seems to have been um kind of common theme unfortunately problems with those along along this program so the previous flights they actually had similar kind of problems maybe the same kind of issue maybe a different issue but again with the thrust and valve is systems on a flight before that actually they had issues with their flight software as well so unfortunately that their program has been quite beset by issues well it's not only Boeing space program that's been beset by issues they have had some problems with planes lately you know they've had f gage problems and they've had couple of bad crashes in the aesa door does it generate sort of a lack of trust from Naser and what Boeing's doing overall or would it not be related I think it would probably trigger a bit more scrutiny um in terms of what their process are in quality control uh you know there obviously these repeated issues on on the Starliner flights as you say there's been these issues on on the uh the airframe from from Boeing as well so there's obviously some some issue somewhere in the pipeline of their quality assurance um on the company side so I think there's yeah could be more more interest in seeing where that is and uncovering where these problems are going to come from so is Boeing a little bit behind because uh SpaceX has had quite a few people up there hasn't it yeah so the the commercial crew program was um so kicked off in in 2010 so it's uh a long way down down the track now but actually SpaceX were were significantly delayed from when they were supposed to be launching as well so I think the first one of those went up in 2020 and so that they've been you know firing on all cylinders so since then they've been uh handling all the all the launch for the US side but yeah they they actually had some early early problems as well though so it's not just an exclusive issue to Boeing um whil all the flight missions have been very successful for for SpaceX they actually had some initial problems on the ground so one of their their test um items on the ground was lost an explosion actually with thrust the system um so no no crew on board it was a test of systems on the ground but actually they had a a failure as well and we've not lost any people yet no no no so so no no crew loss and I think very low risk really as well in this scenario okay but but not no risk not no risk and yeah exactly so you know after having lost two shuttles you know NASA is going to be incredibly risk averse to any problems that might arise on this one yeah so getting back to the sort of timeline the astronauts obviously got to the space station but when did they first start noticing there were Thruster issues so the thrust R were actually encountered on the approach to the uh prior to talking with the space station um there was some investigation so that the their stay was originally extended a little bit from eight days to to a couple of weeks just to you know investigate these problems a little bit more there's a range of testing done both on board the spacecraft and on the ground to actually investigate and understand what the root cause of these problems might be I want you to know that Boeing has worked very hard with NASA to get the necessary data to make this decision we want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS so they they were basically working on the space station doing the various maintenance experiments tasks um and doing some of these investigations that they could do what they could access on on board the the vehicle it's taken a long time here it a finess that have finally come out with what their plan is MH and so this last weekend we found out what are they going to do yep so they've decided that um the crew will come down on the crew 9 as it's called the next uh SpaceX launch now hitching left for the opposition absolutely well be mind NASA is a customer both Boeing and SpaceX so yeah they that SpaceX launch will be going up with two astronauts um it should be flying with four be going up with two and uh the two that are already on the station will be coming down to fill out that four basically on this way back down so that's launching uh in September um and they'll be coming down then in February on its regular schedule so they're not changing the schedule of any any other flights basically so it's it's all within their sort of standard program and so they're they're basically just chopping and changing who's who's on which seats why didn't they race up the risky these guys um so there's not really any need to do so um they've got the the options to bring them down in the case of an emergency so Starline is still the the emergency escape vehicle as it were for for these two there's enough Vehicles there there's a star liner there's a a SpaceX Dragon captal Ander soyers all at station at the moment um so there's enough seats to bring everyone down if there's an emergency there's never been a need to do that in the last you know 20 years of operating space station so it's a very low risk of that that happening there will be a period after the Starliner departs and before the the next SpaceX Dragon goes up that there is actually a shortage of seats to to bring people down um but there contingency for that is basically to strap them down in in the the cargo pallets on the dragon um so it's getting closer and closer to science fiction at this well yeah it's uh it's not an ideal scenario but it's something that's uh it's one of their sort of plan contingencies in the event that was an issue with one of the vehicles anyway and N never looked at asking the Russians to give them a lift back down the sawers crew um so they they'd have to send another one up there because they've only got one at station at the moment so um it wouldn't really be the best scenario anyway no in any regard let's not bother them if we don't have to but actually the um the the next SpaceX Dragon launch will be uh we'll have a cosmonaut on board from Russia um because they have this this seat sharing program and actually the next Sawyers will have an American astronaut on there as well so there is still this Corporation in space but it's probably frosted than it used to be right now they're going to bring the Starliner down but without people on it what will they do in that process try and fix it before it goes or take it down with with it problems yeah so so so the Starliner is designed to be a reusable spacecraft um so one part of it is is Lost in Space so it burns up in the atmosphere that's the the service module then you have the Command Module and the capule basically that comes down is reusable um the issues they they're having is actually on the service module so that's something that will be lost on its way down so we're not actually going to get that down to the ground to actually understand some of the problems which is what why they wanted to do these experiments on board the station and extend that period of time where they could actually investigate this problem so try and find out as much as possible while they can what went wrong yeah that's that's why they ini had this initial stay in in orbit to investigate the problem um and try to reproduce that on the ground so have they come close to have we had any um updates about their progress and they yeah so they they've done extensive testing I think a Joint Nasa and Boeing team done a lot of testing on the ground with another version of this system on uh in one of the test ranges they've managed to reproduce the problem to an extent they've actually found that when they're firing the rusters in the kind of sequence that they would be in orbit uh they're actually generating more heat than they were expecting and that's caused an expansion of uh some of the the parts of the ceiling system so some Teflon seals basically expanded which constricts the flow propellant which chokes the engines and then they don't get the the propulsion out when they're expecting that propulsion system is critical to the return flight home including undocking and the braking burn on the return to Earth the small engines need to fire hundreds of times to keep the spacecraft in the precise orientation for safe free entry and on target touchdown they've then tried to re reproduce that on the vehicle in space um and they've not quite been able to find exactly the same results and so this is where there's probably been bit of a disagreement between Boeing and NASA that because they're not being able to actually demonstrate that is definitely the root cause of the issue they can't necessarily say that how it's going to operate way down so Nessa is not prepared to take that leap of Fai I think there's there's certain margins involved as well so there's a very uh tight sequence of events that needs to to happen when the vehicle comes down so there's the um separation from the space station there's a deorbiting maneuver and then actually orientation of the capsule on its way down um so if they lose any of the thrusters in that process um by this if this is a recurring problem they won't necessarily have the time to to work that problem and come up with workarounds on that very tight timeline before you come into re-entry so there's there's very tight margins on the time frames and so it's not something they necessarily want to risk a crew doing the the botom line relative to Bringing Starliner back is it was just there was just too much uncertainty in the prediction of the thrusters if we had a model if we had a way to accurately predict uh what the thrusters would do for the undock and all the way through the deorbit burn and through the separation sequence I think we would have taken a different course of action but when we looked at the data and looked at the potential for Thruster failures with a crew on board uh and then getting into this very tight sequence of finishing the deorbit burn which put the vehicle on an entry and then immediately uh maneuvering from that into a sep sequence to separate the service module and crew module it was just too much risk with the crew and so we decided to pursue the uncrewed uh test so they will L the likelihood of them getting that capsule back as quite High it should it should be quite High yeah I think you know I don't want to put a number on it but it's I think people are expecting really to come down without too many problems which will obviously be a big boost for for Boeing if that if that's successful with quite a bit of money I imagine well not not just I more reputationally than than the financial side of things well speaking of that at the press conference on the weekend Nessa was asked do you trust Boeing and there was quite an interesting answer to that I wouldn't necessarily call it trust I would call it a technical disagreement where we get uh a group of Engineers together and they disagree on the risk level of what could potentially happen to the thrusters which is you know absolutely Fair um the the Boeing team I guess will had I think they they've got their their problem solved they know what what the issue is uh but NASA will be taking a very different risk assessment of of of the mission you know this program has been running for a good few years now the space station program has been running very well um for decades and anything that kind of risks a crew at this stage would be you know just Unthinkable you um you know the space station du to retire in in 2030 and actually be deorbited so there's you know we're at the the final years potentially of the St station program um so particularly at this stage it would be yeah very sad time to be losing a crew as of yesterday there were 12 humans in space four SpaceX crew three Sawyers astronauts and our two stranded visitors on the is plus three people on the Chinese space station four more astronauts were due to have lifted off overnight on Polaris Dawn another private SpaceX flight ironically delayed because of a helium leak the same issue that dog the Starliner so actually they'll be up to 16 can be pretty crowded house how big is a space station uh it's always sort of uh reference to the size of a football field basically so it's about 400 tons roughly speaking that kind of scale so do they each get their own room no unfortun it's it's shared spaces I think but there's various modules on there so there's there's kind of the Russian segment there's the the American segment there's European modules there's Japanese modules um so there's a lot of kind of shared space but there's also more kind of National Space as well it's a long time to not be able to have a shower or eat apples or vegetables what do they do for that kind of thing how do they wash yeah so there's there's uh showering systems on the space station so you essentially get in a bag and uh wash yourself down in that it's it's a bit awkward I think um obviously waterers is a premium um there's a lot of recycling on board uh of course of waste water that can be cycle back into usable water again um so yeah Shower systems are on there I people have been living in space now for for many decades you know from the shuttle program mere space station onwards really uh for long duration so it's uh it's a lot of these systems that are actually getting in place and that's one of the ideas behind the space station is actually how do we live and work in space for a prolong period of time I'm a bit worried about Sunny because I saw on the press conference she had this amazing hair that's going all over the place how is she going to get access to shampoo yes is a hazard absolutely having long hair space so uh yeah hair ties are quite a critical piece of infrastructure I think um but yeah in terms of toilet I think that's that's something that goes up on the resupplies as well and you know various dry shampoos and and again it is possible to wash air but a tricky process and do they is there a language barrier between all the astronauts do they like are they poked because they do speak Russian or the Russians speak English do they talk to each other yeah I think that generally speaking they they I think they generally use English um so the the Russian side will will be well trained in English you I think it's uh pretty standard for the astronauts from us and Europe to be trained in Russian as well so it's kind of a almost bilingual station really okay and if they do get a bit lonely since they weren't expecting to not be back the week after can they like can Sun speak to a mom absolutely yeah so there there's really good um communication infrastructure in place now so it's uh you know they got highspeed Wi-Fi on Space Station she's doing fine she's a professional astronaut and this is her job they know they go up something could go happen that they might have to stay longer or come back you know they understand this it's no big deal this is what they do she loves going to space she said that's very very rewarding when you're up there and you're looking down at the planet and see everything that goes down and what a wonderful place we live on so she's not sad at all she knows maybe this will be her last time up there so you know she's happy to be up there we are having a great time here on ISS you know Butch and I have been up here before and it feels like coming back home it feels good to float around it feels good to be in space and work up here with the International Space Station team so yeah it's great to be up here so I'm not complaining Butch isn't complaining and if Sunny's Mama isn't worried I guess neither should we be that's it for today the detail is a newsroom production supported by rnz and New Zealand on air this episode was engineered by ragy poic and produced by Gwen McClure thanks to Dr Ben Taylor I'm Alexia Russell Mata [Music]