CAPE CANAVERAL SPACE FORCE STATION — Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft carrying a pair of NASA astronauts docked with the International Space Station on Thursday as officials discuss new helium leaks and thruster issues. 

The Starliner carrying Cmdr. Barry “Butch” Wilmore and pilot Sunita “Suni” Williams took off from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Wednesday at 10:52 a.m. ET.

Originally, the pair were supposed to autonomously dock with the space station’s Harmony module at 12:15 p.m. ET, Thursday, but there was a thruster issue and they were told to wait 656 feet (200 meters) outside the floating laboratory’s “keep out sphere,” stated NASA in a live feed.

It was revealed that Starliner had five reaction control system thrusters fail and the mission teams performed tests to try to get them working again, stated NASA. Four of the five are functional and that issue resulted in the delay of docking with the ISS, officials later said.

The next docking opportunity was set at 1:33 p.m. ET., Thursday. One minute later, Starliner was attached to the ISS.

“It’s nice to be attached to the big city in the sky,” Wilmore said to mission ground back down on Earth.

Almost two hours later, both Wilmore and Williams boarded the ISS. This will be the third time for each of them to be on the famed space station.

This is the first time two American companies are docked with the ISS; the other one being SpaceX’s Dragon from the Crew-8 mission.

New helium leaks and issues with thrusters

The Starliner has had a series of issues that plagued its launch, namely a helium leak in a flange of the Starliner’s service module’s thruster system. The cause of the leak is believed to be from a faulty seal.

Get details of the issues that prevent many of the launch attempts here.

However, during their more than 24-hour journey to the ISS, it was discovered that at the time there were two more helium leaks, not counting the one before the launch, according to NASA.

“To monitor and manage these leaks, the three helium manifolds were isolated. Those manifolds have all been reopened prior to a Starliner height adjust burn, called NHPC. All affected manifolds will remain open for rendezvous and docking operations,” NASA stated.

But during a NASA teleconference on early Thursday evening, officials say there are a total of four helium leaks at different units called “doghouses” where the Reaction Control System thrusters and Orbital Maneuvering and Attitude Control thrusters are located.

The fourth leak was detected after docking occurred.

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich said that now Starliner is docked with the ISS, the manifolds are closed, preventing leaks.

Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program, said teams are not sure if the leaks are from a faulty seal or issues with the flanges, which connect different wires or valves together.

The next issue that came up was that all five thrusters failed at one point.

"As Starliner began its approach to the space station, five reaction control system thrusters failed off during flight. Mission teams performed a series of hot-fire tests which re-enabled four of the thrusters while the crew manually piloted the spacecraft at the station’s 200-meter hold point. After re-selecting four of the thrusters, Starliner had the fault tolerance required to approach the space station for docking. At the 10-meter hold point, the mission team completed system readiness evaluations and proceeded with docking," the U.S. space agency stated.

During the teleconference, Nappi said it is believed that the data put in the thrusters’ software may have told them to be de-selected.

He stressed the software is OK and that the data entered could be the culprit.

“We will figure them out for the next mission,” Nappi said about the helium leaks and the failing thrusters.

Stich said the thruster that failed to re-select, B1 (bottom one) A3, has been de-selected for the rest of the flight and added that he was confident that the thrusters will work fine when it comes to re-entry.

“We are not necessarily worried about the thrusters for the rest of the flight,” he said.

He added that the helium leaks and the thruster issues are not related.

Another issue that came up was the sublimator, which uses water to control the temperature of Starliner during launch and re-entry. The unit used more water than expected during takeoff, Stich announced. He said that more water was added to the unit.

This is the first crewed mission of the Starliner.

The launch of the Starliner, thanks to United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket, was a relief, ULA CEO Tory Bruno stated to Spectrum News.

(Boeing built the Starliner and United Launch Alliance — a joint business venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin — built the Atlas V rocket.)