A celestial body found three decades ago has now been identified as a pair of brown dwarfs orbiting each other, a recent study has revealed. The object, previously known as Gliese 229B, was the first brown dwarf discovered 30 years ago. Brown dwarfs are considered too large to be planets yet too small to ignite like stars. What makes this discovery unique is that these two brown dwarfs, now named Gliese 229Ba and Gliese 229Bb, circle each other in just 12 days, much faster than many similar objects.

Unexpected Pairing of Brown Dwarfs

For years, astronomers were puzzled by the unusually dim appearance of Gliese 229B, given its mass. This mystery has now been explained, as the light from this object was coming from two separate bodies rather than one. Using the Very Large Telescope in Chile, scientists collected new data showing that what appeared to be a single brown dwarf is actually a close-orbiting pair. Each of these bodies is orbiting a small star about 18 light-years away, which is relatively close to Earth in astronomical terms.

Orbit Shorter than the Moon’s

While astronomers have discovered other brown dwarf pairs before, the Gliese 229Ba and Gliese 229Bb pair is noteworthy because of the proximity of their orbit. The twins complete their orbits around each other every 12 days, which is quicker than the Moon‘s journey around Earth. “It’s quite unusual to see brown dwarfs behaving in this way,” said Rebecca Oppenheimer, co-author of the study from the American Museum of Natural History.

Could More Hidden Brown Dwarf Twins Exist?

The findings suggest there may be more brown dwarfs with hidden companions that have yet to be discovered. Jerry Xuan from the California Institute of Technology, another co-author, believes this could change our understanding of how these objects form and evolve. This discovery, published in Nature, provides valuable insights into the diversity of objects in our universe.
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In the next few weeks, NASA will embark on a significant mission to Europa, the fourth-largest moon of Jupiter. Named Europa Clipper, this spacecraft is designed to search for potential signs of life. While Mars is often the focal point in the quest for life beyond Earth, Europa presents a promising alternative due to its potential liquid water, which is considered essential for life as we understand it. Although delays have occurred due to Hurricane Milton, NASA’s plan to launch the mission remains intact.

Why Europa Holds Potential for Life

Mars may be the easiest target to explore for life, but Europa, along with some of Saturn’s moons, could be better candidates. Liquid water is crucial for life, and on Earth, it supports the chemical reactions that allow living organisms to exist. Scientists believe that Europa, like Saturn’s moons Titan and Enceladus, has vast subsurface oceans beneath its icy exterior. This possibility makes Europa a compelling target for the search for extraterrestrial life.

What the Europa Clipper Will Do

Equipped with nine sophisticated instruments, the Europa Clipper will closely examine the moon’s surface, searching for signs of life beneath the thick ice sheet. The spacecraft will use thermal imaging, spectrometers, and cameras to detect any unusual heat or chemical activity. One of its key objectives is to locate and study potential water plumes erupting from the surface, giving insight into the moon’s subsurface oceans.

Although it will take the spacecraft over five years to reach Jupiter’s orbit, this mission marks a crucial step in exploring Europa. While the Clipper won’t be able to confirm life itself, its findings could lead to more in-depth future missions, bringing us closer to discovering life beyond Earth.

 

The European Space Agency (ESA) is preparing to launch a unique satellite in 2027, designed specifically to study how satellites break apart upon reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. This mission, named DRACO (Destructive Reentry Assessment Container Object), will be an important step in ESA’s effort to develop technology that limits the creation of space debris. ESA has awarded the contract to Deimos, a European technology company, to build this spacecraft, which will provide invaluable data as it breaks apart during its reentry. This data will help scientists better understand satellite disintegration and its environmental impact.

Understanding Satellite Breakup

The goal of the DRACO mission is to collect data on how satellites disintegrate during reentry. By studying this, researchers aim to design future satellites that will fully burn up during reentry, reducing the risk of debris reaching the Earth’s surface. The mission will also examine how spacecraft reentry affects the atmosphere, including how different materials interact with it and what byproducts are produced.

Innovative DRACO Design

At 200 kilograms, DRACO will be about the size of a washing machine. Its design will allow it to break apart like a normal satellite, but a specially engineered capsule will survive reentry. This capsule, measuring 40 centimetres, will carry four cameras and 200 sensors to record crucial data during the breakup. After reentry, it will deploy a parachute and transmit the collected information before being lost at sea.

Advancing Zero Debris Technology

According to Holger Krag, ESA’s Head of Space Safety, the DRACO mission will play a key role in developing future satellite technology. The data it collects will be used to build more demisable satellites by 2030, aligning with ESA’s Zero Debris charter, which aims to stop the creation of space debris within this decade.

Tim Flohrer, head of ESA’s space debris office, also emphasised the mission’s importance in helping to advance zero-debris technologies, particularly as the number of satellite launches continues to increase worldwide.

 

Earth will get a second moon for about two months this year when a small asteroid begins to orbit our planet. The asteroid was discovered in August and is set to become a mini-moon, revolving around Earth in a horseshoe shape from Sept. 29 to Nov. 25.

Researchers at the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, an asteroid monitoring system funded by NASA, spotted the asteroid using an instrument in Sutherland, South Africa and labeled it 2024 PT5. 

Scientists from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid have tracked the asteroid’s orbit for 21 days and determined its future path. 2024 PT5 is from the Arjuna asteroid belt, which orbits the sun, according to their study published in Research Notes of the AAs. 

But Earth’s gravitational pull will draw 2024 PT5 towards it and, much like our moon, it will orbit our planet — but only for 56.6 days.

While other non-Earth objects, or NEOs, have entered Earth’s orbit before, some don’t complete full revolutions of Earth. Some, however, do and become so-called mini-moons.

An asteroid called 2020 CD3 was bound to Earth for several years before leaving the planet’s orbit in 2020 and another called 2022 NX1 became a mini-moon of Earth in 1981 and 2022 and will return again in 2051. 

2024 PT5, which is larger than some of the other mini-moons, will also return to Earth’s orbit — in 2055. 

Earth’s gravity will pull it into its orbit and the asteroid will have negative geocentric energy, meaning it can’t escape Earth’s gravitational pull. It will orbit around Earth in a horseshoe shape before reverting back to heliocentric energy, meaning it will rotate around the sun again, like the other planets and NEOs in our galaxy.

Even after it leaves orbit, it will stay near Earth for a few months, making its closest approach on Jan. 9, 2025. Soon after, it will leave Earth’s neighborhood until its path puts it back into our orbit in about 30 years.

The study’s lead author Carlos de la Fuente Marcos told Space.com the mini-moon will be too small to see with amateur telescopes or binoculars but professional astronomers with stronger tools will be able to spot it.

CBS News has reached out to Marcos for further information and is awaiting response.

The September Harvest Moon, a partial lunar eclipse, will make its debut in the sky Monday evening and last through Thursday morning. The full moon will peak at 10:35 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, Sept. 17, according to NASA.

The is the second of 2024’s four consecutive supermoons, following August’s blue supermoon, a rare phenomenon that dazzled stargazers around the world.

Here’s when and where to catch September’s supermoon spectacle.

When can I see the supermoon and the partial eclipse?

The supermoon will be visible for three full days from Monday to Thursday. What makes this moon special, The Old Farmer’s Almanac says, is that it appears at the same time every night just as the sun is setting.

The partial lunar eclipse will peak 10:44 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Sept. 17. At this point, only 8% of the Moon will be in full shadow, NASA says.

For those looking to get an early start, the moon will enter into Earth’s partial shadow beginning at 8:41 p.m. EDT. Spectators can look up specific moonrise times for their ZIP code using  this tool from the Farmer’s Almanac.

Why is it called the Harvest Moon?

The Harvest Moon coincides with the autumnal equinox, the first day of fall, which is Sunday, Sept. 22. As almanac lore goes, it’s called the Harvest Moon because in the days before electricity lit up our fields, the moon’s bright glow helped guide farmers as they were harvesting crops at the end of the season.

When people think of Harvest Moon, they often picture an orange globe in the sky. Music fans’ minds may also jump to Neil Young’s 1992 album “Harvest Moon.” The album’s titular song references the lunar event with the lines, “Because I’m still in love with you on this Harvest Moon.”

Does September’s full moon have any other special nicknames?

As NASA points out, the September harvest moon goes by several other monikers including the Corn Moon, the Potato Harvest Moon, and the Fruit or Barley Moon.

When will the next full moon take place?

The next supermoon, the third of four, will light up the sky on at 7:26 a.m. EDT on Thursday, Oct.17, per NASA. October’s moon is nicknamed the Hunter’s Moon.

Bengaluru: Indian space startup Pixxel has bagged a NASA contract to support Earth science research using the hyperspectral technology.  The Bengaluru-based company has become part of NASA’s $476-million commercial smallsat data acquisition programme — a first for an Indian startup after the space sector was opened to private companies in 2020.

Co-founder and CEO Awais Ahmed called the award a “monumental achievement for Pixxel”. He said the contract, valid till November 2028, “validates that hyperspectral imaging will be integral to the future of space-based Earth observation and enable us to truly build a health monitor for the planet”.

As per the contract, Pixxel will provide NASA and its US government and academic partners with hyperspectral Earth observation data. This will help empower the administration’s Earth science research and application activities.

Pixxel hyperspectral can capture data across hundreds of narrow wavelengths. Its datasets can also unravel granular insights on climate change, agriculture, biodiversity, and resource management, among others.

Building on this momentum, Pixxel is also making significant strides toward launching six satellites shortly. Fireflies — its 5-metre resolution hyperspectral satellites — will be the highest-resolution hyperspectral satellites ever launched.

These satellites will capture data across over 250 spectral bands, offering more comprehensive coverage with a 40 km swath width and a 24-hour revisit frequency anywhere on the planet.

In addition, Pixxel also plans to expand its constellation to 24 satellites to make hyperspectral data commercially. This will make it more broadly available and accessible to stakeholders across industries and governments.

Pixxel has a constellation of the world’s highest-resolution hyperspectral imaging satellites that are designed for 24-hour revisits anywhere on Earth.

The satellites can help detect, monitor, and predict critical global phenomena across agriculture, oil and gas, mining, environment, and other sectors in up to 50 times richer detail. Pixxel has also launched its in-house Earth Observation Studio, Aurora, to make satellite imagery analysis easily accessible.

The company has also raised over $70 million from Google, Lightspeed, Radical Ventures, Relativity’s Jordan Noone, Seraphim Capital, Ryan Johnson, Blume Ventures, Sparta LLC, Accenture, and others.

After an exhaustive review of suspect transistors in NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, NASA managers have cleared the probe for launch next month as planned on a $5.2 billion mission to find out if a suspected sub-surface ocean on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa is a habitable environment.

The transistor issue cropped up in May, raising fears the scope of the Clipper’s mission might have to be reduced or the flight delayed for costly repairs.

But the review showed the transistors in question will, in effect, heal themselves during the 20 days between the high radiation doses the probe will receive during each of 49 close flybys of Europa, all of them deep in Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field and radiation environment.

In addition, onboard heaters can be used as needed to raise the temperature of affected transistors, improving the recovery process.

“After extensive testing and analysis of the transistors, the Europa Clipper project and I personally have high confidence we can complete the original mission for exploring Europa as planned,” said Jordan Evans, Europa Clipper project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The solar-powered Europa Clipper, one of NASA’s most ambitious planetary probes, is a “flagship” mission designed to make multiple close flybys of Europa to learn whether a subsurface salt water ocean beneath the frozen world’s icy crust could host a habitable environment.

If habitability can be confirmed, “just think of what that means, that there are two places in one solar system that have all the ingredients for life that are habitable right now at the same time,” said Curt Niebur, Europa Clipper program scientist at NASA Headquarters.

“Think of what that means when you extend that result to the billions and billions of other solar systems in this galaxy. Setting aside the ‘is there life?’ question on Europa, just the habitability question in and of itself opens up a huge new paradigm for searching for life in the galaxy.”

Discovered in 1610 by Galileo, Europa has been studied by NASA’s Voyager probes and, much more extensively, by the agency’s aptly-named Galileo orbiter in the 1990s, which made a dozen close flybys.

The spacecraft discovered that Jupiter’s magnetic field was disrupted around Europa, implying an electrically conductive fluid deep within the moon. Given Europa’s frozen crust, the most likely explanation is a sub-surface salt water ocean, kept warm by tidal flexing, the repetitive squeezing by Jupiter’s enormous gravity as the moon swings through its orbit.

The Europa Clipper is not designed to search for signs of life on or below Europa’s crust. But confirming the presence of a hidden sea and determining its habitability would be a major step forward in the search for places in the solar system and beyond where life, as currently defined, could exist.

“This is an epic mission,” Niebur said. “It’s a chance for us to explore not a world that might have been habitable billions of years ago, but a world that might be habitable today, right now,”

“A chance to do the first exploration of this new kind of world that we’ve discovered very recently called an ocean world, that is just totally immersed and covered in a liquid water ocean, completely unlike anything we’ve seen before. That’s what Europa Clipper and her team are going to unveil for us.”

Scheduled for launch from the Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 10 atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, the spacecraft will first fly past Mars in February, using the red planet’s gravity to send it toward another velocity-boosting flyby of Earth in December 2026.

Only then will the Europa Clipper be traveling fast enough to head out into deep space on a trajectory to Jupiter. Even so, the probe won’t reach its target until April 2030, using its thrusters to brake into an initial orbit around the giant planet.

Five months later, the first in a series of close flybys of several moons will be needed to set up the first close encounter with Europa in the spring of 2031. During two science campaigns running through 2034, at least 49 close flybys of Europa are planned, including passes as low as 16 miles above the moon’s frozen surface.

The mission was progressing toward launch when engineers were alerted in May to a potentially serious problem with transistors used throughout the spacecraft. Similar components were found to fail at lower radiation doses than expected.

The radiation environment around Jupiter is powered by the planet’s titanic magnetic field, which traps and accelerates electrically charged particles from the solar wind and the volcanic moon Io. The radiation environment in the vicinity of Europa would kill an unprotected astronaut in a matter of hours.

As a result, Europa’s flight computer and other key components are protected in a radiation-resistant “vault.” Radiation “hardened” components are used throughout the spacecraft. But test data from the manufacturer showed similar components were failing at lower radiation levels than the Europa Clipper will experience.

But after months of testing, engineers concluded the spacecraft can complete its mission with no major modifications.

“We completed extensive testing to validate the transistors on the spacecraft,” Evans said. “We ran tests 24 hours a day over the last four months at multiple locations. We simulated flight-like conditions to illuminate any issues that the transistors might have over our four-year science mission across the variety of applications we have on the spacecraft.

“We put these representative transistors into these environments, irradiated entire circuits to see how the system behaves. … We replicated that transistor self-healing, or annealing as it’s called, that occurs by heating them to room temperature while they, essentially, (are out of) that intense radiation environment as we go around each orbit.”

Based on the results, he said, “we’re ready for our final launch preparations and reviews. We are ready for Europa.”

The Federal Aviation Administration has grounded SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets pending an investigation to determine what caused a first-stage booster to crash onto a landing barge early Wednesday after helping launch another batch of Starlink internet satellites.

After standing down from the piloted Polaris Dawn launch late Tuesday because of an unfavorable long-range forecast, SpaceX pressed ahead with the first of two planned back-to-back launches of Starlinks, one from Florida and the other from California.

But the second flight was called off after the first stage used in the Florida launch crash-landed and toppled into the Atlantic Ocean while attempting to touch down on a SpaceX droneship stationed several hundred miles northeast of Cape Canaveral.

The FAA said it would require an investigation, effectively grounding SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets — including the Polaris Dawn booster — until the probe is complete and corrective actions are approved.

“A return to flight of the Falcon 9 booster rocket is based on the FAA determining that any system, process or procedure related to the anomaly does not affect public safety,” the FAA said in a statement.

“In addition, SpaceX may need to request and receive approval from the FAA to modify its license that incorporates any corrective actions and meet all other licensing requirements,” the agency said.

Late Tuesday, SpaceX delayed Wednesday’s planned launch of the Polaris Dawn mission, a commercial flight featuring what will be the first non-government spacewalk, to Friday at the earliest because of predicted end-of-mission splashdown weather. The launching now is on indefinite hold pending the landing mishap investigation.

The landing failure ended a string of 267 successful booster recoveries in a row dating back to February 2021. The Falcon 9’s second stage, however, successfully carried 21 Starlink internet satellites to their planned orbit.

The first stage landing appeared normal until the moment of touchdown when more flames than usual were visible around the base of the rocket as it neared the deck. A landing leg immediately collapsed on touchdown and the booster, obscured by fire and smoke, tipped over the side of the landing barge into the Atlantic Ocean.

“After a successful ascent, Falcon 9’s first stage booster tipped over following touchdown on the A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship,” SpaceX said on social media. “Teams are assessing the booster’s flight data and status.”

It was first stage B1062’s 23rd and what turned out to be its final launch and landing, a new reuse record. SpaceX is working toward certifying its Falcon 9 first stages for up to 40 flights each.

Shortly after the Florida Starlinks were deployed, the company called off the California launch, planned for 5:58 a.m. EDT, to give engineers more time to review telemetry and video footage, on the lookout for any signs of trouble that could affect other rockets.

“Standing down from our second @Starlink launch of the night to give the team time to review booster landing data from the previous launch,” SpaceX said. “A new target launch date will be shared once available.”

After standing down from the piloted Polaris Dawn launch late Tuesday, SpaceX shifted gears and pressed ahead with plans for back-to-back launches of Starlink internet satellites early Wednesday, one from Florida and the other from California.

But the second flight was called off after the first stage used in the Florida launch toppled into the Atlantic Ocean and broke apart while attempting to land on a SpaceX droneship stationed several hundred miles northeast of Cape Canaveral. The landing mishap ended a string of 267 successful booster recoveries dating back to February 2021.

The Falcon 9’s second stage, meanwhile, successfully carried 21 Starlink satellites to their planned orbit.

The first stage landing appeared normal until the moment of touchdown when more flames than usual were visible around the base of the rocket as it neared the deck. A landing leg immediately collapsed on touchdown and the booster, obscured by fire and smoke, tipped over the side of the landing barge into the Atlantic.

“After a successful ascent, Falcon 9’s first stage booster tipped over following touchdown on the A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship,” SpaceX said on the social media site X. “Teams are assessing the booster’s flight data and status.”

It was first stage B1062’s 23rd and what turned out to be final launch and landing, a new reuse record. SpaceX is working toward certifying its Falcon 9 first stages for up to 40 flights each.

Shortly after the Starlinks launched from Florida were deployed, SpaxeX called off the California launch, planned for 5:58 a.m. EDT, to give engineers more time to review telemetry and video footage, on the lookout for any signs of trouble that could affect other rockets.

“Standing down from our second @Starlink launch of the night to give the team time to review booster landing data from the previous launch,” SpaceX said on X. “A new target launch date will be shared once available.”

Here are updated Falcon 9 stats through through this morning’s Florida launch:

Total Falcon 9 launches to date: 367
Total Falcon Heavy launches to date: 10
Total Super Heavy/Starship launches to date: 4
Falcon 9/Heavy launches this year: 83 (82 F9s, 1 FH)
In-flight Falcon 9/Heavy failures: 2 (06/28/15, 07/11/24)
Successful Falcon 9/Heavy launches in a row: 13
Most successful flights in a row: 344 (between 6/28/15 and 07/11/24)

Starlink launches to date: 190 (181 dedicated flights, 9 mixed payloads)
Starlink launches this year: 58
Starlink satellites launched to date: 6,920
Starlinks with direct-to-cell capability: 136
Starlinks presumed to be working going into latest launch: 6,269*
Payloads launched to orbit this year by SpaceX: 1,548

First stage fleet leader: B1062, 23 flights (booster lost on landing)
California landings to date: 20
Florida landings to date: 54
Droneship landings to date: 267 (not counting today’s flight)
Successful booster landings overall: 341
Successful booster landings in a row: 267 (before today’s flight)

*Source: https://planet4589.org/space/con/star/stats.html

As NASA debates the safety of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft in the wake of multiple helium leaks and thruster issues, the agency is “getting more serious” about a backup plan to bring the ship’s two crew members back to Earth aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon, officials said Wednesday.

In that case — and no final decisions have been made — Starliner commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams would remain aboard the International Space Station for another six months and come down on a Crew Dragon that’s scheduled for launch Sept. 24 to carry long-duration crew members to the outpost.

Two of the four “Crew 9” astronauts already assigned to the Crew Dragon flight would be bumped from the mission and the ship would be launched with two empty seats. Wilmore and Williams then would return to Earth next February with the two Crew 9 astronauts.

Shortly before the Crew Dragon launch, the Starliner would undock from the station’s forward port and return to Earth under computer control, without any astronauts aboard. The Crew Dragon then would dock at the vacated forward port.

Two earlier Starliner test flights were flown without crews and both landed successfully. The current Starliner’s computer system would need to be updated with fresh data files, and flight controllers would need to brush up on the procedures, but that work can be done in time to support a mid September return.

If that scenario plays out, Wilmore and Williams would end up spending 268 days — 8.8 months — in space instead of the week or so they planned when they blasted off atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket on June 5.

Based on uncertainty about the precise cause of the thruster problems, “I would say that our chances of an uncrewed Starliner return have increased a little bit based on where things have gone over the last week or two,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s director of space operations.

“That’s why we’re looking more closely at that option to make sure that we can handle it.”

But he cautioned that no final decisions will be made on when — or how — to bring the Starliner crew home until the agency completes a top-level flight readiness review.

No date has been set, but it could happen by late next week or the week after.

“Our prime option is to return Butch and Suni on Starliner,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. “However, we have done the requisite planning to make sure we have other options open. We have been working with SpaceX to ensure that they’re ready to (return) Butch and Suni on Crew 9 if we need that.

“Now, we haven’t approved this plan (yet). We’ve done all the work to make sure this plan is there … but we have not turned that on formally. We wanted to make sure we had all that flexibility in place.”

Before the Starliner was launched, NASA and Boeing engineers knew about a small helium leak in the spacecraft’s propulsion system. After ground tests and analysis, the team concluded the ship could be safely launched as is.

The day after launch, however, four more helium leaks developed and five aft-facing maneuvering thrusters failed to operate as expected. Ever since, NASA and Boeing have been carrying out data reviews and ground tests in an effort to understand exactly what caused both issues.

The Starliner uses pressurized helium to push propellants to the thrusters, which are critical to keeping the spacecraft properly oriented. That’s especially important during the de-orbit braking “burn” using larger rocket engines to slow the ship down for re-entry and an on-target landing.

To clear the Starliner for a piloted return to Earth, engineers must develop acceptable “flight rationale” based on test data and analyses that provides confidence the ship can make it through re-entry and landing with the required level of safety.

“The Boeing team (is) very confident that the vehicle could bring the crew home right now with the uncertainty we’ve got,” said Bowersox. “But we’ve got other folks that are probably a little more conservative. They’re worried that we don’t know for sure, so they estimate the risk higher and they would recommend that that we avoid coming home (on Starliner) because we have another option.

“So that’s a part of the discussion that we’re having right now. But again, I think both views are reasonable with the uncertainty band that we’ve got, and so our effort is trying to reduce that uncertainty.”

Boeing adamantly argues the Crew Dragon backup plan isn’t needed and that tests and analyses of helium leaks in the Starliner’s propulsion system and initial trouble with maneuvering thrusters show the spacecraft has more than enough margin to bring Wilmore and Williams safely back to Earth.

The helium leaks are understood, Boeing says, they have not gotten worse and more than enough of the pressurized gas is on board to push propellants to the thrusters needed to maneuver and stabilize the spacecraft through the critical de-orbit braking burn to drop out of orbit for re-entry and landing.

Likewise, engineers believe they now understand what caused a handful of aft-facing maneuvering jets to overheat and fire at lower-than-expected thrust during rendezvous with the space station, causing the Starliner’s flight computer to shut them down during approach.

Ground tests of a new Starliner thruster, fired hundreds of times under conditions that mimicked what those aboard the spacecraft experienced, replicated the overheating signature, which was likely caused by multiple firings during tests of the capsule’s manual control system during extended exposure to direct sunlight.

The higher-than-expected heating likely caused small seals in thruster valve “poppets” to deform and expand, the analysis indicates, which reduced the flow of propellant. The thrusters aboard the Starliner were test fired in space under more normal conditions and all operated properly, indicating the seals had returned to a less intrusive shape.

New procedures are in place to prevent the overheating that occurred during the rendezvous. Additional manual test firings have been ruled out, no extended exposure to the sun is planned and less frequent firings are required for station departure compared to rendezvous.

In a statement Wednesday, Boeing said, “We still believe in Starliner’s capability and its flight rationale. If NASA decides to change the mission, we will take the actions necessary to configure Starliner for an uncrewed return.”

The helium plumbing and thrusters are housed in the Starliner’s service module, which will be jettisoned to burn up in the atmosphere before the crew capsule re-enters for landing. As such, engineers will never be able to examine the hardware first hand to prove, with certainty, what went wrong.

At this point, that uncertainty appears to support bringing Wilmore and Williams back to Earth aboard the Crew Dragon. But it’s not yet a certainty.

“If we could replicate the physics in some offline testing to understand why this poppet is heating up and extruding and then why it’s contracting, that would give us additional confidence to move forward, to return Butch and Sonny on this vehicle,” Stich said.

“That’s what the team is really striving to do, to try to look at all the data and see if we can get a good physical explanation of what’s happening.”

In the meantime, the wait for a decision, one way or the other, drags on.

“In the end, somebody – some one person – designated to be the decision maker, that person has to come to a conclusion,” Wayne Hale, a former shuttle flight director and program manager, wrote in a blog post earlier this week.

“The engineers will always always always ask for more tests, more analysis, more time to get more information to be more certain of their conclusions. The decider also has to decide when enough has been done. The rub in all of this … is that it always involves the risk to human life.”

Hale concluded his post by saying: “I do not envy today’s decision makers, the ones weighing flight rationale. My only advice is to listen thoroughly, question effectively, ask for more data when necessary. But when it is time, a decision must be made.”