Nasa announcement on stranded Starliner astronauts Sunita ...

Pallab GhoshScience correspondent, BBC News

Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft was launched on 5 June despite there being a small leak of helium gas.

The leak was extremely small and engineers believed that it would not affect the mission and so went ahead with the launch.

But four further helium leaks developed during the mission and five of its 28 manoeuvring thrusters cut out during the approach to the space station, four of which were restarted.

Nasa"adjusted" the spacecraft’s return to a date in July, saying that flight engineers wanted to study the spacecraft to get to the bottom of the faults before it re-entered into the Earth’s atmosphere.

The space agency stressed that the astronauts were not stranded and that Starliner was certified to return to Earth in the event of an emergency on the ISS.

What happens next will depend on the outcome of the agency review.

More here.