Posted on 08/30/2024 6:27:38 AM PDT by Salman
NASA and Boeing teams have completed a comprehensive Delta-Flight Test Readiness Review, giving the green light for the uncrewed CST-100 Starliner spacecraft to undock from the International Space Station. The undocking is scheduled for no earlier than 6:04 p.m. EDT on Friday, Sept. 6, depending on weather and operational readiness.
Once Starliner undocks, it will take approximately six hours to reach its designated landing site at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico. The spacecraft is expected to land around 12:03 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 7, using parachutes and inflated airbags to soften the impact. Recovery teams at White Sands will secure the spacecraft and prepare it for transport back to Boeing's Starliner factory at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
This mission follows NASA's decision on Aug. 24 to conduct the Starliner return without a crew. In preparation, mission managers and flight controllers have updated the spacecraft's systems with mission-specific data, ensuring that Starliner can perform a fully autonomous return. The spacecraft will be monitored and controlled remotely from Starliner Mission Control in Houston and Boeing Mission Control Center in Florida, with teams on standby to intervene if necessary during undocking, re-entry, and landing procedures.
Starliner has previously demonstrated its capability with successful uncrewed entries and landings during two orbital flight tests, including an autonomous undocking from the station.
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(Excerpt) Read more at spacedaily.com ...
This frees the docking port for SpaceX Crew 9.
Then people can stop the silly blather about astronauts being “stranded”.
And the NASA program manager should be asking Boeing some serious and seriously uncomfortable questions. Like: “Why the hell should we give you even one more penny when SpaceX is doing the job properly at half the cost?”
< sigh >
Do at least try to keep up.
All I can say is unbolt that curse carefully. Don’t want its last act to damage the station.
It seems to me that fault-tolerance for the malfunctioning thrusters will be needed, but that might end badly. Of course, I've thought it will end badly since the thing started to go haywire on the way up.
They expect it to land... I am thinking it will burn up on the way. Otherwise why aren’t the 2 astronauts onboard?
They’re concerned about the Thrusters malfunctioning and stranding the Crew in whatever situation: in a bad orbit, wrong angle and either a too steep entry and burning up, to shallow and skipping off out into space with no chance of getting back to earth, crashing into space debris, etc. (little things like that.)
The capsule made a perfect landing minus crew...
The original crew is mumbling “Now we got to live with these two new ‘naults till February!”
Thanks for the info. So boeing managed to not destroy the craft that We Taxpayers paid for. That’s good to hear.
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