A stuck Boeing Starliner spacecraft is currently delaying SpaceX's Crew-9 mission to the International Space Station (ISS), and NASA is considering canceling the manned flight's return to Earth.

The delay, which could push the Crew-9 mission scheduled for August 18 back to September 24, will allow for finalization of the return plan for Boeing's crewed test flight, NASA wrote in an August 6 blog update.

There is still no return date for Boeing’s spacecraft or the astronauts, who have now been on the ISS for months longer than expected. NASA engineers are currently debating whether to send the Starliner back to Earth unmanned and bring the astronauts home on a SpaceX vehicle as early as 2025.

A series of problems with the Starliner spacecraft

The problems began shortly after NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams flew into orbit on Boeing’s spacecraft after years of delays for the project. NASA successfully launched the first crewed flight of Starliner from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on June 5.

Wilmore and Williams were scheduled to stay in orbit for a week, but during the flight, the Starliner suffered a series of problems, including five helium leaks and five failures of its reaction control thruster system. This forced engineers to troubleshoot and extended the astronauts' stay on the ISS from the planned one week to two months, with no official return date yet.

NASA engineers say they are spending more time collecting data on Starliner’s flight capabilities and fixing its problems. But progress toward an eventual return to Earth has stalled. NASA was supposed to begin evaluating the spacecraft’s flight capabilities in early August, but that process has yet to begin.

Tests conducted by engineers at the Starliner facility in White Sands, New Mexico, showed that during the spacecraft's ascent to the ISS, Teflon gaskets inside five faulty RCS thrusters may have heated up and bulged out of place, impeding the flow of propellant.

A hotfire test conducted while the spacecraft was docked with the ISS on July 27 showed normal thrust, but NASA engineers are concerned that the problem could recur during the spacecraft’s descent back to Earth. They are also concerned that a helium leak could damage some of the spacecraft’s orbital and attitude control (OMAC) systems.

NASA said it has several contingency plans, one of which is to send two of the four Crew-9 astronauts to the ISS so that Wilmore and Williams can return to Earth in February 2025. But so far, NASA has not made any official decisions.

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According to Live Science