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Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft was set to mark its crowning moment this month: carrying two NASA astronauts for a round trip to the International Space Station, proving that the long-delayed and over-budget capsule is up to the task of the task.
Starliner is halfway to this goal.
But the two veteran astronauts piloting this test flight now find themselves in a tentative position: extending their stay aboard the space station for a second time while engineers on the ground scramble to learn more about the problems that have tormented the first stage of their journey.
Spaceflight veterans Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore arrived at the space station aboard the Starliner on June 6. NASA had initially expected their stay to last about a week.
But problems the vehicle encountered along the way, including helium leaks and thrusters that abruptly stopped working, raised questions about how the second half of the mission would play out.
Williams and Wilmore will return no earlier than June 26, NASA said Tuesday, extending their mission to at least 20 days as engineers work to better understand the spacecraft’s problems while it is safely attached to the space station.
Officials said there was no reason to believe Starliner would not be able to bring the astronauts home, although “we really want to work on the rest of the data,” said Steve Stich, head of the NASA’s commercial crew program, during a conference Tuesday. press conference.
Meanwhile, Boeing sought to present the mission as a success and a learning opportunity, even though that left the Starliner team grappling with the “unplanned” side of the mission, as Mark Nappi, vice president of Boeing and director of the Starliner program, put it on Tuesday.
It is not uncommon for astronauts extend their stay unexpectedly aboard the space station – for days, weeks, even months. (NASA also said the Starliner could spend up to 45 days in the orbiting laboratory if necessary, according to Stich.)
But the situation creates a moment of uncertainty and embarrassment that adds to a long list of similar mistakes made by the Boeing Starliner program, which is already years behind schedule. It also adds to a chorus of unfavorable news that has followed Boeing as a company for some time.
A biting finale
Boeing and NASA engineers said they were choosing to keep Starliner — and with it, Williams and Wilmore — aboard the station longer than planned, mainly to conduct additional analysis. The helium leaks and propellant problems occurred on a part of the vehicle that is not intended to survive the return trip from space. So mission teams are delaying the spacecraft’s return in a last-ditch effort to learn everything that happened. .
Danger threatens every time a spacecraft returns from orbit. This is perhaps the most perilous part of any space mission.
The journey will require the Starliner to collide with Earth’s thick atmosphere while traveling at more than 22 times the speed of sound. The process will cook the spacecraft’s exterior at around 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Then, a set of parachutes — which Boeing redesigned and tested as recently as January — must safely slow the capsule before it reaches land. (Starliner will be the first capsule made in the United States to be parachuted to a land on the ground rather than crashing into the ocean. Boeing hopes this approach will make it easier to recover and refurbish the Starliner after flight.)
A series of setbacks
Starliner’s journey to this historic crewed test mission began in 2014 when NASA tapped Boeing and SpaceX to develop a spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts to the International Space Station.
At the time, Boeing was seen as the stalwart aerospace giant that would likely get the job done first, while SpaceX was the unpredictable newcomer.
However, over the past decade, trends have changed.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft safely completed its first crewed mission — which appeared to go off without a hitch — in 2020. And the vehicle has been flying astronauts and paying customers regularly ever since.
The two astronauts who piloted Crew Dragon’s maiden flight – Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley – also stayed aboard the space station longer than planned, spending more than 60 days instead of the brief stay expected on such space flights. essay.
But Hurley and Behnken’s stay was extended so the astronauts could help with daily activities aboard the space station, which was understaffed at the time. The expansion was not directly related to specific software or hardware issues with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.
Spacecraft problems, on the other hand, have marred Boeing’s Starliner program at virtually every step. The vehicle faced years of delays, setbacks and additional expenses that cost the company more than $1 billion, according to public financial filings.
The Starliner’s first test mission, carried out without a crew in late 2019, was fraught with errors. The vehicle misfired in orbit, a symptom of software problems that included a coding error that shifted an internal clock by 11 hours.
A second uncrewed flight test in 2022 discovered additional software issues and issues with some of the vehicle’s thrusters.
Stich, the NASA program manager, said in a June 6 interview press conference that engineers may not have completely resolved these issues as of 2022.
“We thought we solved this problem,” Stich said, adding, “I think we’re missing something fundamental that’s going on inside the thruster.”
Michael Lembeck, associate professor of practice in aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a consultant for Boeing’s spaceflight division from 2009 to 2014, told CNN it would be difficult to determine whether Additional ground tests could have detected the propellant problems. at hand.
But Lembeck stressed that assessing the success of this test mission is not as simple as directly comparing it with the inaugural crewed test flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.
For example, he said, SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule — a directing predecessor to Crew Dragon — flew more than a decade of uncrewed cargo missions to the space station before Crew Dragon took flight.
“SpaceX had a head start with the cargo program,” Lembeck said. “I think they have an advantage that Boeing didn’t have. It’s a sort of duty for Boeing to build a crew vehicle from scratch.
If this Starliner test mission were to encounter additional setbacks, however, it could put Boeing in a situation where it would have to rely on its rival to bring Williams and Wilmore home.
“The embarrassing problem is that a Crew Dragon would have to go and pick up the astronauts,” Lembeck said. The spacecraft “could be sent with two crew members and returned with four – and it would probably be on its way back.”
Boeing’s broader problems
Boeing executives have repeatedly sought to make clear that the Starliner program operates independently of the company’s other units, including the commercial aircraft division that has been at the center of scandals for years.
“We have humans flying this vehicle. We always take this very seriously,” Nappi said during a briefing in April before Starliner takes flight.
Nappi also said at the time that the Starliner team was operating at “peak performance” and “really looking forward to executing” a mission safely.
Asked about the claim Tuesday, Stich, the NASA director, said Boeing and NASA officials had always expected to discover additional problems that would need to be resolved during this test flight.
Williams had alluded to this expectation during a press conference before the flightsaying, “We’re always finding things, and we’re always going to find things.
“Everything will not be absolutely perfect while we are flying the spaceship. …We feel very safe and comfortable with the way this spacecraft flies, and we have backup procedures in case we need them,” Williams said.
Stich acknowledged Tuesday, however, that Boeing and NASA could have avoided some of the Starliner’s problems: “Maybe we could have done different ground tests to characterize some (of the propellant problems) in advance,” he said. said.
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