NASA and Boeing officials have denied reports claiming that astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore are stranded on the International Space Station (ISS). Despite suspected helium leaks on the Boeing Starliner spacecraft, the officials stated that they are taking their time to fully understand the situation before the astronauts make the journey back to Earth.
“I want to make it real clear that we’re not in any rush to come home,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew programme manager, was quoted as saying during a press conference late on Friday (US time).
“The station is a nice, safe place to stop and take our time to work through the vehicle and make sure we’re ready to come home,’ he added.
NASA and Boeing are still assessing the performance of Starliner’s propulsion system before its return to Earth from the orbiting lab. The US space agency has announced that they are now aiming for the end of July for the next spacewalk outside the space station.
This modification enables ground teams to continue troubleshooting and understanding the water leak in the service and cooling umbilical unit that led to an early end of a spacewalk on June 24.
Originally scheduled for an eight-day stay at the orbiting space laboratory, the astronauts arrived at the ISS on June 6.
According to NASA, the spacecraft requires seven hours of time to perform a normal end-of-mission and it "currently has enough helium left in its tanks to support 70 hours of free flight activity following undocking."
Meanwhile, NASA's Voyager 1 space probe is back online after seven months of technical difficulties. The probe encountered problems in November 2023 when it began transmitting strange, unreadable data. The team has been working to resolve the issue since then.
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Inputs from IANS
