Boeing’s Starliner capsule will have a thorough examination now that it is back on Earth.
Starliner was launched on May 19, embarking on a crucial unmanned demonstration mission to the International Space Station called Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2). The spacecraft docked in orbit the lab a day later, then returned to Earth on Wednesday (May 25). touching the ground as planned at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
OFT-2 was designed to prove it Starliner is ready to take astronauts to and from orbit for NASA, which signed a contract with Boeing for these services in 2014. And NASA and Boeing have no plans to waste time preparing Starliner for the flight manned.
Live updates: Boeing Starliner Orbital Flight Test 2 mission to the ISSRelated: Boeing Starliner OFT-2 test flight for NASA in amazing photos
During a press conference shortly after Starliner’s landing on Wednesday, Mark Nappi, vice president and manager of Boeing’s commercial crew program, said crews would soon move the vehicle to a prep area for shipment to the company’s facilities at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. in Florida, where it is scheduled to arrive around June 9th. Then, Nappi said, Boeing will begin preparing Starliner for its first manned mission, known as the Crew Flight Test (CFT).
That said, NASA will need to review the OFT-2 data before certifying Starliner for manned flight. And there will be some problems to check, because the mission did not go perfectly well. For example, two of Starliner’s propellers failed during orbit insertion burning, which took place about half an hour after launch. (A safety propellant was launched at the right time and Starliner managed to complete the burn.)
No target date has been set for CFT, and NASA and Boeing have not yet announced which astronauts will fly on the mission. However, leaders of both organizations have expressed hope that the test flight, which will take astronauts into orbit in the laboratory, will take place before the end of the year and have indicated that the details for the launch date and the complement of the crew could materialize at some point this summer.
Boeing is not the only company to have a contract with NASA’s commercial crew program. SpaceX also signed one in 2014 and has already launched four manned operational missions to the space station with its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule.
At Wednesday’s post-landing press conference, NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich referred to a photo he had seen with Starliner and Dragon docked at the space station.
“You know, it’s getting me a little bit of goosebumps talking about it, because between Starliner and Dragon, that’s really what this commercial program has been all along: having these two different companies, with the big systems “Developed, provides the transportation of the crew to the space station under this new commercial crew model,” Stitch said. “And the flight we just landed today shows that the Starliner is a great vehicle for transporting the crew.”
NASA astronaut Suni Williams is one of the few people trained to fly Starliner, and has worked with Boeing teams during the development of the vehicle. At a press conference on May 18, Williams was already waiting for Starliner’s return, saying, “We want the spacecraft to return so we can start testing the environmental control system … We have a lot of work ahead of us before we arrive. in flight with crew, but we are biting the piece. ”
The OFT-2 was Starliner’s second attempt at an unmanned space station mission. During the first, which was released in December 2019, Starliner suffered software errors and got stuck in the wrong orbit for a date. And OFT-2 was due to launch last summer, but routine checks revealed more than a dozen valves attached to the Starliner propulsion systema topic that ended up underpinning the mission for more than eight months.
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