How it's going
Posted on 09/07/2024 4:39:03 AM PDT by george76
Starliner has finally come home, more than three months after it launched on a planned 10-day mission..
Starliner's long space odyssey is over.
The Boeing capsule, named Calypso, returned to Earth early this morning (Sept. 7), touching down in the New Mexico desert at 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT; 11:01 p.m. local time on Sept. 6).
"Great landing of Calyspo!" NASA astronaut Suni Williams said on the agency's webcast. "I don't think that could have gone better."
The landing was long-delayed, coming more than three months into an orbital mission originally expected to last about 10 days. And, while Starliner launched with two NASA astronauts aboard — Williams and Butch Wilmore — nobody rode it home.
It wasn't supposed to end like this.
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A crucial test flight..
The roots of the just-completed mission, known as Crew Flight Test (CFT), go back a decade. In 2014, NASA gave SpaceX and Boeing multibillion-dollar contracts to finish work on their astronaut taxis — capsules known as Crew Dragon and Starliner, respectively.
The agency wanted one or both of those vehicles to start flying astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) by 2017, reestablishing a homegrown orbital human spaceflight capability — something the U.S. had lacked since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011.
...
Neither capsule hit that ambitious target. SpaceX's first astronaut mission, a test flight to the ISS called Demo-2, lifted off in May 2020. Starliner's crewed debut was CFT, which launched atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on June 5, sending Williams and Wilmore to the orbiting lab for a planned eight-day stay.
CFT had been slated to fly last year, but it was delayed to deal with parachute issues and to remove large amounts of insulating tape from the capsule's wiring system. (Analsyes determined that the tape was flammable and thus posed a safety risk.)
The mission encountered issues more recently as well. A planned May 25 launch attempt was scrubbed, for example, after team members noticed a small helium leak in Starliner's service module. More helium leaks popped up after launch, as Starliner chased the ISS down in orbit. And, more concerningly, the capsule experienced propulsion problems: Five of its 28 reaction control system (RCS) thrusters conked out not long after liftoff.
The thruster problems scuttled Starliner's first ISS docking attempt on June 6. The capsule succeeded on its second try that day, and team members eventually brought four of the five faulty thrusters back online. But the issue loomed large over the rest of the mission.
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A tough decision..
NASA extended CFT's orbital stay repeatedly, giving mission team members more time to analyze and troubleshoot the thruster problems. Such work included modeling studies and testing both in space (with Starliner) and on the ground (with a Starliner RCS thruster at NASA's White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico).
Ultimately, NASA concluded that bringing Williams and Wilmore home on Starliner posed an unacceptable safety risk.
"The decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring Boeing’s Starliner home uncrewed is the result of our commitment to safety: our core value and our North Star," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement on Aug. 24, the day the agency announced the news.
Williams and Wilmore will stay aboard the ISS until February, when they'll hitch a ride home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon — the one flying the company's Crew-9 mission, which is set to lift off later this month. To make room for them, Crew-9 will lift off with two astronauts instead of the usual four.
Starliner, meanwhile, was packed up for an uncrewed return to Earth. Among the gear that it carried home were the "Boeing Blue" spacesuits that Williams and Wilmore wore aboard the capsule. The astronauts have no need for them now.
"The suits are not compatible," Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said during a press conference on Wednesday (Sept. 4). "So the Starliner suits would not work in Dragon, and vice versa."
Sticking the landing..
Starliner undocked from the ISS on Friday (Sept. 6) at 6:04 p.m. EDT (2204 GMT) as planned. It performed a series of burns to set itself up for the uncrewed landing, which occurred under parachutes in New Mexico's White Sands Space Harbor just after midnight today.
Everything went well.
"I'm happy to report that Starliner did really well today in the undocking, reentry and landing sequence," Stich told reporters after the touchdown. "It was a bullseye landing, a great landing out at White Sands."
He added that Wilmore and Williams would have been fine if they'd been aboard the capsule. "It would have been a safe, successful landing with the crew on board," Stich said. But he added that NASA's decision to err on the side of safety with the data they had on hand before landing still stands: "I think we made the right decision."
Boeing representatives did not participate in the post-landing briefing, instead ceding mission representation to NASA, the space agency said. But Boeing did release a statement shortly after Starliner's return.
"I want to recognize the work the Starliner teams did to ensure a successful and safe undocking, deorbit, reentry and landing," Mark Nappi, Boeing's vice president and program manager of Boeing's Commercial Crew Program, said in the statement. "We will review the data and determine the next steps for the program."
This was the third touchdown overall for Starliner, by the way. The capsule also flew two uncrewed test flights to the ISS, one in December 2019 and one in May 2022. Starliner failed to meet up with the orbiting lab on the first flight after suffering several glitches. The second uncrewed mission was a success, though Starliner experienced some thruster issues on that flight as well. (These were a different set, associated not with the RCS but with Starliner's orbital maneuvering and control system.)
A cloudy future..
Boeing and NASA had hoped that CFT would pave the way for Starliner's certification, allowing the capsule to begin flying six-month-long astronaut missions to the ISS.
The first such operational flight, Starliner-1, had been targeted for February 2025. That launch has already been pushed back, however, to August 2025 at the earliest. And it's unclear at the moment if Starliner will be certified by then — or what additional tests, if any, NASA will require before certification can occur.
"I think what we need to do now is really lay out the overall plan, which we have not had time to do," Stich said in the Sept. 4 press conference.
"We haven't, because the teams have been so focused on this flight, laying out that overall search strategy, the overall amount of work we've got to go do," he added. "And then when we do that, we'll have a better understanding of, When can we certify the vehicle, and when can we resume flights?"
Crew Dragon, meanwhile, was certified shortly after Demo-2's successful conclusion in 2020. The SpaceX vehicle is now gearing up for its ninth operational astronaut flight to the ISS for NASA. (That would be Crew-9, as the name suggests.)
SpaceX has also flown a handful of private crewed missions to the station, as well as the Inspiration4 astronaut flight to Earth orbit, which did not meet up with the orbiting lab. And it's preparing to launch Polaris Dawn, another free-flying commercial astronaut mission, which aims to conduct the first-ever private spacewalk.
Boeing now has a couple of jobs to do:
1) Change suit design to be compatible with Space-X.
2) Add food storage to capsule.
There is an old medical joke:
“The operation was a success, but the patient died.”
New Boeing joke:
“The Starliner successfully returned, but without the astronauts.”
I’m old enough to remember Mercury, Gemini, Apollo...
Kids these days have no idea what they missed.
2024: "If Its Boeing I'm Not Going"
Dude, where’s my ride?
I have only childhood memories of Apollo.
Those people were a different breed. They chainsmoked their way into space.
I used YouTube to see what the earlier missions were about - what gigantic problems in engineering and logistics they had! I saw mentions of the fantastic problem of testing the Apollo Command Module while folding in changes and trying to keep the program going.
It seems, to me, that NASA is dropping the ball here, to not insist on compatibility with the suits, for instance. It reminds me of that Apollo 13 movie scene about the CO2 cartridges.
Now put that piece of junk in a museum before it kills somebody
A video so you don’t have to wait for that webpage to load (was taking quite a while on my machine but mine is slow - this is pretty quick)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfQD7-sIWpA
Note to self: Do not take Boeing DEI Starliner to the ISS.
It was a glorious time to be alive.
We had our problems as a nation, but we had drive, dreams, and a spirit to overcome.
Deep State has done its damndest to stamp that out in us.
And, to our shame, we have allowed them to do it.
I won’t print what I’m thinking about what Boeing and NASA have allowed themselves to become.
How it's going
And do not take Boeing 737 MAX anywhere
I bet that crew left stranded wish they had rode that craft back to earth.
If NASA is too chicken to take risks they should go back to sending chimps to space, the capsule worked fine, no humans needed
As a child in the 60s, the space program was such a wonderful diversion for me. It was a strong counterpoint to all the turmoil of the time. The positive nature of it, the cutting edge technology and the spirit of exploration were just fantastic. The astronauts were heroes. NASA could do no wrong. Seeing an entire industry working towards one goal: to land men on the Moon.
IT WAS AN EXCITING TIME.
Now, at least, Elon Musk and his SpaceX are the innovators trying to bring back that past glory.
NASA needs to get its head out of its butt….
GREAT POINT.
If there’s another flight the heads of Boeing and NASA should be on it
Hmm, so the ISS is hearing spooky sounds up there and one of the guys was sick and had to be quarantined. Suddenly, NASA had to send up these two astronauts in a beat up garbage can. There are 11 docking stations on the ISS though only 8 are used today. So, 8 docking stations but somehow they’re frantic over getting Starliner disconnected. We don’t beg Russia to help out because our warmongering leaders want to blow each other off the face of the earth. Somehow, of the 5 countries involved with the ISS there are no contingency plans or spacecraft. But, glory be, Starliner performed perfectly on its return flight without the astronauts. But we’ve got Elon on speed dial. Oh wait, speaking of lack of planning, the suits won’t fit in the new craft. BTW, not a peep about the sick guy. Brilliant display of government work.
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