With no return date set, Starliner flight test astronauts remain on space station for now

What was intended to be an eight-day stay has turned into a two-month mission for astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.

And the pair will remain onboard the International Space Station even longer, as NASA said Thursday that testing on the Starliner capsule is still underway.

"We don't have a major announcement today relative to a return date. We're making great progress, but we're just not quite ready to do that," said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, during his opening remarks to media.

Wilmore and Williams launched atop a Atlas V rocket June 5 on the first crewed test flight of Boeing's Starliner capsule.

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The Starliner program was years behind scheduled and plagued with problems during development. But NASA and Boeing were confident enough to go ahead with the test flight last month, even as a helium leak was discovered in capsule's service module.

Boeing teams determined that the helium leak was small and contained and proceeded with launch operations.

As the hours leading to docking with the ISS approached, additional helium leaks in the service module were detected. As the crew prepared for approach towards the ISS, multiple thrusters shut off, forcing teams on the ground to do what is called a "hot fire". As the crew manually piloted Starliner, all but one of the thrusters fired back up ? allowing the crew to safely dock to the ISS.

During a press conference Thursday, Stich and Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager of Boeing Commercial Crew Program, both emphasized confidence that Starliner can safely bring the crew home.

The Starliner service module will be jettisoned and disintegrate during re-entry, so engineers on the ground are conducting tests at the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico to try to understand what caused the helium leaks and thruster problems.

In the coming days, there will be a "hot dock" fire test where Starliner's thrusters will be fired while still docked to the space station ? ensuring they fire correctly before moving towards undocking.

The helium leak rates will also be reassessed, as it has been six weeks since the latest evaluation of the issue. This was not an issue, as while docked, the helium is not needed and closed off.

Nappi told reporters that teams are learning a lot from this flight, and he only wished they had used different terminology when describing the mission objectives. While it was stated to be a minimum of eight days, there was a high possibility the mission could run longer ? in this case, close to two months over. “We all knew it was going to go longer than that," said Nappi.

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Brooke Edwards is a Space Reporter for Florida Today. Contact her at [email protected] or on X: @brookeofstars.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: As astronauts wait, NASA and Boeing work on solving Starliner puzzle