CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft docked with the International Space Station on its first crewed flight June 6 after working through problems with the spacecraft’s thrusters.
The spacecraft docked with the forward port on the station’s Harmony module at 1:34 p.m. Eastern, nearly 27 hours after its launch from Florida on the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission. On board Starliner are NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.
That docking took place more than an hour behind schedule as engineers worked on as many as five reaction control system (RCS) thrusters that went offline during various phases of the spacecraft’s approach. Space station controllers kept Starliner outside the 200-meter “keep out sphere” of the station while working to bring those thrusters back into operation.
It was not immediately clear what caused the thrusters to malfunction. Late June 5, NASA and Boeing said that spacecraft controllers had detected two more helium leaks in Starliner’s propulsion system. These were separate from the helium leak detected after a scrubbed May 6 launch attempt, and took some thrusters offline.
Mission managers approved plans to allow the docking to proceed early June 6, deciding to use extra helium to repressurize the system and re-enable the thrusters.
Starliner is scheduled to remain docked to the station for at least eight days, although agency officials said at a post-launch briefing June 5 that they will keep Starliner at the station longer to complete planned tests.
Wilmore said in a communications session June 5 that he and Williams were largely pleased with the performance of the spacecraft as well as the experience of launch. At that point in the mission, about six hours after launch, he said that the mission was going “fabulously.”
He specifically called out the ability of the spacecraft to perform manual maneuvers. “Suni and I have both done some manual maneuvering, and it is precise,” he said. “Much more so than the simulator.”
Williams highlighted the suits developed for Starliner that she and Wilmore wore. “They are really great suits: easy to operate in, easy to move around in,” she said. “It’s another great day in space.”
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