After spending just under a week at the space station, Boeing’s new CST-100 Starliner spacecraft returned to Earth this afternoon, landing intact with the help of parachutes and airbags in the desert. of New Mexico. The successful landing puts an end to a crucial test flight for Starliner, which showed the vehicle’s ability to launch into space, dock at the station and return home safely.
In the shape of a rubber band, Boeing’s Starliner capsule was built in collaboration with NASA to launch the agency’s astronauts to and from the International Space Station or ISS. The mission is part of NASA’s commercial crew program, which challenged private companies to create space taxis to take people into low Earth orbit. But before NASA let its personnel travel in the vehicle, the space agency wanted Starliner to show that it could make every move on a trip to the ISS without people on board.
With today’s landing, this unmanned test flight, called OFT-2, has come to an end, with Starliner performing all the important steps it had to achieve. The capsule was successfully launched into orbit on May 19, riding into space on top of an Atlas V rocket; he approached and docked at the ISS on May 20; and has been decoupled from the space station this afternoon before returning home. It wasn’t a completely smooth flight, though. Throughout the mission, Starliner encountered a number of problems with its various thrusters, small engines used to maneuver and propel the vehicle through space. None of these problems proved fatal to the flight, however, and Starliner was able to complete the OFT-2 as planned.
With today’s landing, OFT-2 has come to an end
It has also been a difficult road to reach this release. The name of this test flight, OFT-2, actually means Orbital Flight Test-2. This is because it is a repeat of the same test flight that Boeing attempted to make in 2019. In December of that year, Boeing launched an unmanned Starliner on board, sending it into space with a another Atlas V rocket. But a software flaw in Starliner caused the capsule to fire its thrusters incorrectly after it separated from the rocket, and eventually the spacecraft entered the wrong orbit. The problem prevented Starliner from reaching the space station, and Boeing was unable to demonstrate the spacecraft’s ability to dock to the ISS. Boeing had to take the spacecraft home early and was able to land the capsule at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, the same place where Starliner landed today.
Boeing tried to relaunch Starliner last summer, but just hours before takeoff, the company shut down after finding more than a dozen throttle valves were clogging and not opening. correctly. Boeing has so far needed to fix the problems, and the company says a redesign of the valves may occur in the future. But now, two and a half years after the original failed flight, Starliner has finally shown that it can launch and dock autonomously on the ISS, a key feature it will have to perform over and over again when people are in board.
Landing is also a critical task for Starliner to bring passengers home safely. To demonstrate these capabilities for this flight, the capsule was decoupled from the ISS at 14:36 ET this afternoon, flew slowly around the station and then distanced itself from the orbiting laboratory. At 18:05 ET, Starliner used its propellers on board to slow down and get out of orbit, launching it with the Earth’s surface. Shortly afterwards, the vehicle sank through the planet’s atmosphere, experiencing temperatures of up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Starliner then used a series of parachutes to slow his fall before landing at White Sands above the airbags to help cushion the landing. It marked the second successful landing for Starliner, as Boeing already showed the vehicle landing during its first failed test flight in 2019.
“This landing will arrive at 5:49 p.m., Central Time, almost exactly six days after the mission,” Brandi Dean of NASA, a NASA communications officer, said in a live broadcast of the landing. “Just a beautiful landing at White Sands tonight.”
However, there was some concern about this landing, as Starliner experienced several issues with its propellers throughout the flight. When the capsule was launched into space last week, two of the 12 thrusters used by Starliner to enter right orbit failed. Boeing said the chamber’s pressure drops caused the engines to be shut down soon. Eventually, Starliner’s flight control system was able to redirect to a security thruster in time and the capsule entered orbit as planned. However, these same thrusters were needed to take Starliner out of orbit, but they seemed to work as planned despite the two failed thrusters.
There were mistakes throughout the flight
There were other mistakes throughout the flight. A couple of different smaller thrusters, used to maneuver Starliner during docking, also failed due to low chamber pressure. However, it did not prevent the capsule from binding to the ISS. “We have a lot of redundancy that didn’t really affect the encounter operations at all,” Steve Stich, NASA’s director of programs for the commercial crew program, said during a post-coupling press conference. And on top of all that, the Boeing team realized that some of the Starliner thermal systems used to cool the spacecraft showed colder temperatures, and the engineering team had to manage it during the coupling.
Starliner still achieved many of his goals while attached to the ISS. Astronauts aboard the ISS opened the Starliner hatch this weekend, entered the vehicle and retrieved the cargo carried to the station. The capsule has carried about 600 pounds of cargo to Earth, as well as Rosie the Rocketeer, a mannequin mounted inside Starliner to simulate what it will be like when humans board.
Now, with Starliner back on Earth, there is still a lot of work to be done. Over the next few months, NASA and Boeing will study the faults that occurred on this flight and determine if Starliner is ready to take people into space during a test flight called CFT, for the manned flight test, which could occur at the end of the year. It will be a big milestone for Boeing, which has lagged far behind NASA’s other commercial crew provider, SpaceX. SpaceX has already made five manned flights at the station for NASA in its Crew Dragon capsule, which carried its first passengers in 2020.
But if Starliner is allowed to fly people, NASA will finally have what it has always wanted: two different American companies capable of bringing astronauts from the agency into orbit.