"Failure is not an option" Starliner crew speaks to media during NASA and Boeing update

The two astronauts that rode Boeing's Starliner capsule to the International Space Station last month are confident that they will come home in the same vehicle.

They just don't know when.

"Failure is not an option", said Starliner Commander Butch Wilmore during a press conference beamed down from the ISS Wednesday morning.

Starliner has history of problems

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Starliner is one of two capsules built by private companies for NASA to ferry astronauts to the ISS. The other is SpaceX Crew Dragon, which made it's first crewed flight in 2020 and which has had 13 successful mission to the station so far.

After years of setbacks, Boeing was finally able to launch the Starliner carrying Wilmore and Sunita Williams to the ISS last month on what was supposed to be a one-week mission.

Prior to launch, a helium leak was found in the service module ? the underneath of the Starliner capsule which contains thrusters and is disposed upon reentry. 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, addional 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.

Since then, the crew's landing date had been pushed twice before being postponed indefinitely as teams continue to review data from the service module ? which is lost during the return to Earth. With this being a test flight ? Boeing and NASA are carefully looking over data to ensure proper development of future Starliner designs.

NASA teams are looking at causes behind the issues leading to this point, and investigating all areas of future thruster performance ? which is critical to the safe reentry of Starliner.

"We are actually doing thruster testing as we speak at White Sands New Mexico, going through that process, trying to replicate what we saw on that flight day," said Wilmore.

"We've practiced a lot so I have a feeling... I have a real good feeling in my heart that the spacecraft will bring will bring us home no problem," said Williams.

Astronauts thoughts on Starliner

During the Wednesday morning NASA press briefing, Wilmore and Williams appeared on a video stream with a large American Flag in the background.

"Welcome aboard the International Space Station first. It's a great place to be a great place to live a great place to work," said Wilmore with a grin. "As you can see the American flag behind us showing the pride in our nation and what we have been able to do to this point on this mission."

Wilmore said that on a scale of one to ten ? with one being the best and ten being the worst ? he is tempted to rate Starliner's handling as a one.

During the approached to the ISS, multiple thrusters went down, leaving the crew to take manual control of the spacecraft. While they could tell the power was reduced, Wilmore said the handling "was still impressive".

"I'll just reiterate again, this is a test flight. We were expecting to find some things and so we are finding stuff and we're correcting it and making changes ? making updates with our control team," said Williams. "Every day we had conferences to go over things that we found or we thought about or we might add for the next flight."

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: Starliner astronauts in space have confidence in NASA/Boeing teams