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After years of delays and a dizzying series of setbacks during test flights, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is finally ready to make its inaugural crewed launch.
The mission is on track to lift off from Florida as early as May 6, carrying NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the International Space Stationmarking what could be a historic and long-awaited victory for the beleaguered Starliner program.
“Design and development are difficult – especially with a human rover,” said Mark Nappi, vice president and manager of Boeing’s Starliner program, during a press conference Thursday. “There were a number of things that were surprises along the way that we had to overcome. … It certainly made the team very, very strong. I am very proud of how they overcame every problem we encountered and got us to this point.”
Boeing and NASA officials made the decision Thursday to move forward with the launch attempt in less than two weeks. However, Ken Bowersox, NASA associate administrator Space Operations Mission Directoratenoted that May 6 “is not a magic date.”
“We will launch when we are ready,” he said.
If successful, Starliner will join SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft on routine trips to the space station, keeping the outpost in orbit fully staffed with astronauts from NASA and its partner space agencies.
Such a scenario – with Crew Dragon and Starliner flying regularly – is one the US space agency has long been hoping for.
“This is history in the making,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said of the upcoming Starliner mission during a March 22 mission. Press conference. “We are now in the golden age of space exploration.”
SpaceX and Boeing developed their respective vehicles under NASA’s command Commercial Crew Program, a partnership with private industry contractors. From the beginning, the space agency intended to have both companies operating at the same time. The Crew Dragon and Starliner spacecraft would each serve as a backup for the other, giving astronauts the option to continue flying even if technical problems or other setbacks prevent one spacecraft from landing.
NASA did not initially predict, however, that SpaceX’s Crew Dragon would operate alone for nearly four years before Boeing’s Starliner achieved its first crewed test flight.
In the early days of the program, which awarded In the 2014 SpaceX and Boeing contracts, NASA favored Boeing — a close partner dating back to the mid-20th century — over SpaceX, which the federal agency viewed as a relatively young and capricious beginner.
The vision of Boeing, SpaceX and NASA
As late as 2016, NASA was planning its schedule with the vision that the Starliner would beat Crew Dragon on launch pad.
But the race between Boeing and SpaceX took a clear turn in 2020. Riddled errors a Starliner test flight the previous year, leaving NASA and Boeing officials scrambling to figure out what went wrong. Starliner did not dock with the space station on that mission due to software problems, including a problem with the spacecraft’s internal clock, which was off at 11 o’clock.
Meanwhile, SpaceX made history in May 2020 with the launch of its Demo-2 test flight, carrying astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on a two-month mission to the International Space Station.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon has been making routine trips ever since, transporting NASA astronauts and even paying customers and tourists. The spacecraft has already carried out 13 manned missions in orbit.
Boeing, however, has spent several years facing a number of challenges, including a list of problems that were discovered in 2022 during the spacecraft’s mission. second unmanned test flight. Boeing’s commercial aircraft division has also faced a series of scandals – including the 737 Maximum Crisis and the recent quality control issues highlighted after a port cover exploded during a Alaska Airlines flight in January – which damaged the company’s brand.
At one point in 2020, NASA officials even admitted that they had turned more scrutiny to SpaceX and its unorthodox methods while problems with Boeing’s Starliner went unnoticed.
“Maybe we didn’t have as many people involved in this process as we should have,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, at a July 2020 press conference.
“When one vendor (SpaceX) has a newer approach than another, it is often natural for a human to spend more time on that newer approach, and we may not have spent the time we needed with the more traditional (Boeing) approach.” . ”
Starliner’s setbacks
Boeing’s space division operates separately from its commercial airline team, and officials at NASA and the U.S. aerospace giant have routinely sought to make that distinction.
NASA officials also made clear that they are working more closely than ever with Boeing, with personnel on the ground at Boeing facilities overseeing some of the fixes the company has implemented ahead of the Starliner’s next flight.
“This is an important capability for NASA. We signed up to do this and we’re going to do this and be successful at it,” Nappi said Thursday. “I don’t think about it in terms of what’s important to Boeing, but rather in terms of what’s important to this program.”
Still, Boeing and NASA have a long list of issues to resolve.
During the last flight test in 2022, for example, engineers discovered that the Starliner’s parachute suspension lines had a lower failure threshold than initially expected.
NASA and Boeing engineers tested a solution to that problem earlier this year, but parachutes will remain top of mind as they undergo some last-minute checks before takeoff, Stich said Thursday.
Some tape that was also used to protect wiring harnesses was found to be flammable, and Boeing had to remove and replace about a mile of the material, according to Nappi.
Boeing may even need to implement a redesign of some valves on the spacecraft due to corrosion issues. This update, however, is not expected to be in effect until the second manned flight, scheduled for 2025 at the earliest.
On May’s inaugural crewed flight, Boeing will use a “perfectly acceptable mitigation” that should prevent valves from sticking, Nappi said in March.
Starliner and security
Despite the long drive to the launch pad, the two people at the center of Starliner’s first manned mission — Williams and Wilmore, two longtime NASA astronauts — said upon arriving at the launch site that they are more confident than ever.
“We want the general public to think it’s easy, but it’s not — it’s very difficult,” Wilmore said after arriving at the Starliner launch site in Florida on Thursday. “We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t ready. We are ready. The spacecraft is ready and the teams are ready.”
Wilmore mentioned in a March press conference that he does not expect the Starliner spacecraft to enter any “failure mode.”
“But if something happens — because we’re all human, we can’t build things perfectly — if something happens, we have multiple ways to downgrade,” he said during the Press conferencereferring to modes that give astronauts the ability to take more manual control over the spacecraft if something doesn’t go according to plan.
Williams said during a news event in March, “We wouldn’t be sitting here if we didn’t feel — and tell our families that we felt — confident in this spacecraft and in our abilities to control it.”
She added during Thursday’s press conference in Florida: “I have every confidence not only in our capabilities and the capabilities of the spacecraft, but also in our mission control team, who are ready for the challenge.”
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