‘Not stranded in space’: how Nasa lost control of Boeing Starliner narrative | Space | Space

It should have been a welcome public relations triumph for Boeing, an opportunity to show that even if panels were falling from its aircraft, it could still fly humans into space and return them safely to Earth.

And for a while at least, it looked like it had been successful. The majestic June launch of the much-delayed and over-budget Starliner capsule from Florida, ferrying two Nasa astronauts to the International Space Station, offered a glimpse of a bright new future in the heavens for the troubled aerospace giant.

The euphoria, however, was as fleeting as a shooting star. Technical issues with the pioneering spacecraft mean it is still docked to the orbiting outpost, 59 days into a maiden crewed test mission that was originally expected to take up to 10. And alarming – yet inaccurate – headlines that the astronauts are somehow stranded indefinitely in space, like Matt Damon in the Martian, are proliferating.

The saga represents more of a crisis in communications management than any failure of Starliner, which after all is an experimental vehicle suffering similar teething troubles to any preceding generation of spacecraft, from the mighty Apollo moon rockets of the 1960s to the space shuttle, and last year’s “rapid unscheduled disassembly” of Elon Musk’s futuristic Starship.

Announcements in recent days from Nasa and Boeing, partners in the Starliner project as…