NASA acknowledged Wednesday that there were “tensions” in recent meetings with Boeing officials over how to return two astronauts stranded aboard the International Space Station (ISS) due to malfunctions in the U.S. aerospace giant’s Starliner capsule.
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The American space agency, however, denied press reports that shouting had punctuated these meetings.
NASA announced at the end of August that it was now Boeing’s competitor, SpaceX, which would be responsible for bringing Butch Wilmore and Sunni Williams back to Earth.
AFP
The serial difficulties encountered on the Starliner led to this heavy decision not to use this ship for the return mission. A snub for Boeing, already bogged down by repeated setbacks on its airliners.
The two astronauts were supposed to spend eight days in space, but will ultimately stay there for at least eight months, until February 2025 and SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission.
Boeing has publicly stated on several occasions that it is confident in the safety of its ship.
The absence of group leaders from recent NASA news conferences had fueled speculation that there were rifts with the space agency.
According to the New York Postciting sources familiar with the matter, recent meetings between senior officials from both sides have often ended in quarrels accompanied by shouting matches.
NASA’s commercial human spaceflight program manager, Steve Stich, said he wouldn’t characterize the meetings as heated, but that they included “tense technical discussions.”
AFP
“Any time you’re in a meeting of this importance, where there’s this kind of decision (to be made), there’s a certain amount of tension in the room,” he said.
He said that despite Boeing’s certainty about its projections, the NASA team “was not comfortable” proceeding, “because of the uncertainty around the model.”
Starliner is due to detach from the ISS shortly after 2200 GMT on Friday before beginning its uncrewed descent and landing in the western United States on Saturday morning.
NASA ordered a new spacecraft from Boeing and SpaceX ten years ago to each carry its astronauts to the ISS. With two vehicles, it wants to avoid being left without a solution in case of a problem with one or the other.
But Elon Musk’s company has largely beaten Boeing and has been acting alone as the American space taxi for four years now.
