With NASA astronauts docked on the Worldwide Area Station far longer than deliberate, the company’s management on Wednesday acknowledged potential options to Boeing’s Starliner for returning the crew to Earth.

Nonetheless, the Boeing’s spacecraft stays the first choice for returning crew, officers mentioned.

Officers say Starliner capsule “Calypso” could return as quickly as the tip of this month from its prolonged ISS keep, pending outcomes of testing a defective propulsion system. Starliner has now been in house 36 days and counting because the company and Boeing carry out extra testing in New Mexico earlier than clearing the spacecraft to return.

The mission is the primary time Starliner is carrying individuals, flying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.

NASA’s Industrial Crew supervisor Steve Stich emphasised throughout a press convention that the primary “choice at the moment is to return Butch and Suni on Starliner,” including, “we do not see any cause” at the moment to show to the company’s different transportation choice, which might be SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, to deliver again the astronauts.

Stich — whereas acknowledging {that a} SpaceX capsule might be a part of contingency plans in case Starliner had been to return from the ISS empty — famous that NASA doesn’t but have to “decide as as to if we have to do something completely different.”

“Actually we have dusted off a couple of of these issues to have a look at relative to Starliner, simply to be ready within the occasion that we must use a few of these sorts of issues,” Stich mentioned.

“[But] there’s actually been no dialogue with sending one other Dragon to rescue the Starliner crew,” Stich added later.

Boeing and NASA on July 3 started testing the spacecraft’s thruster expertise again on the bottom in White Sands, New Mexico, aiming to duplicate a difficulty that induced as many as 5 of Calypso’s thrusters to close down when the spacecraft was maneuvering to dock with the ISS. The bottom testing is being performed to “make it possible for with all these pulses and all the warmth we’re placing into it, that it would not trigger any harm to the thruster,” Stich mentioned.

Stich famous that an “finish of July” return for Starliner is “optimistically” primarily based on finishing the testing. Boeing and NASA groups in White Sands are conducting inspections of the check thruster over this subsequent week.

However “up to now we have not been capable of replicate the temperatures that we noticed in flight,” Boeing’s Mark Nappi, vp of the Starliner program, mentioned through the press convention.

“What we’re making an attempt to do with this testing is fill in some gaps as a result of … what we’re making an attempt to do is perceive if the thrusters are performing [as expected], then we will undock and simply return. If the thrusters had been by some means broken, then what would we do in a different way?” Nappi mentioned.

“We do not imagine that we’ve broken thrusters, however once more, we need to fill within the blanks and run this check to guarantee ourselves,” Nappi added.

Wilmore and Williams, chatting with press from the ISS, each expressed confidence about returning on Starliner.

“We belief that the checks that we’re doing are those that we have to do to get the proper solutions to offer us the information that we have to come again,” Wilmore mentioned.

Starliner was as soon as seen as a competitor to SpaceX’s Dragon, which has made 12 crewed journeys to the ISS over the previous 4 years. Nonetheless, numerous setbacks and delays have steadily slipped Starliner right into a secondary place for NASA, with the company planning to have SpaceX and Boeing fly astronauts on alternating flights.

The Starliner crew flight check represents a closing main step earlier than NASA certifies Boeing to fly crew on operational, six-month missions starting as quickly as February.