The spacecraft Boeing Starliner was about to mark its biggest achievement this month: carrying two NASA (United States space agency) astronauts on a round trip to the International Space Station (ISS), proving that the long-delayed and over-budget capsule , is up to the task.
Starliner is halfway to that goal.
But the two veteran astronauts piloting this test flight are now in an uncertain position — extending their stay aboard the space station for a second time, while engineers on the ground race to learn more about the problems that plagued the first leg of their journey.
Spaceflight veterans Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore arrived at the space station aboard Starliner on June 6. NASA initially projected his stay would last about a week.
But the problems the vehicle experienced en route, including helium leaks and thrusters that abruptly stopped working, have raised questions about what the second half of the mission will look like.
Williams and Wilmore will now return no sooner than early July, NASA announced Friday night, extending their mission to at least 20 days as engineers race to get a better understanding of the spacecraft’s problems while it is safely docked. to the space station.
Officials said there is no reason to believe Starliner won’t be able to bring astronauts home, although “we really want to look at all the remaining data,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said in a statement. press conference on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Boeing sought to frame the mission as a success and a learning opportunity, although it left the Starliner team to deal with the “unplanned” side of the mission, as Mark Nappi, vice president and manager of Boeing’s Starliner program, said. Boeing, on Tuesday (19).
It is not uncommon for astronauts to unexpectedly extend their stay aboard the space station – by days, weeks or even months. NASA also said Starliner could spend up to 45 days in the orbiting laboratory if necessary, according to Stich.
But the situation creates a moment of uncertainty and embarrassment that adds to a long list of similar mistakes by Boeing’s Starliner program, which is already years behind schedule. It also adds to a chorus of unfavorable news that has been following Boeing as a company for some time.
A nail-biting ending
Engineers from Boeing and NASA said they are opting to leave Starliner — and with it, Williams and Wilmore — aboard the station longer than expected, mainly to conduct additional analysis. The helium leaks and thruster problems occurred in a part of the vehicle that was not designed to survive the trip back from space, so mission teams are delaying the spacecraft’s return as a final effort to learn everything they can about the spacecraft. that went wrong.
Danger lurks whenever a spacecraft returns from space. It is perhaps the most dangerous part of any space mission.
The journey will require Starliner to enter Earth’s thick atmosphere traveling at more than 22 times the speed of sound. The process will cause the outside of the spacecraft to reach around 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Then, a set of parachutes — which Boeing recently redesigned and tested in January — should safely slow the capsule down before it hits the ground. (Starliner will be the first U.S.-made capsule to land on the ground instead of falling into the ocean. Boeing hopes this approach will make it easier to recover and refurbish Starliner after flight.)
A series of setbacks
Starliner’s journey to this historic manned test mission began in 2014, when NASA chose both Boeing and SpaceX to develop a spacecraft capable of taking astronauts to the International Space Station.
At the time, Boeing was seen as the aerospace giant likely to complete the task first, while SpaceX was the unpredictable newcomer.
Over the past decade, however, the tides have changed.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft safely completed its first crewed mission — which appeared to go smoothly — in 2020. And the vehicle has been regularly flying astronauts and paying customers ever since.
The two astronauts who piloted the Crew Dragon’s inaugural flight — Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley — also remained aboard the space station longer than expected, totaling more than 60 days rather than the brief period expected for such test flights.
But Hurley and Behnken’s stay was extended so the astronauts could help with daily activities aboard the space station, which at the time was short-staffed. The extension was not directly related to specific software or hardware issues with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.
Spacecraft problems, on the other hand, have tarnished Boeing’s Starliner program at virtually every turn. The vehicle faced years of delays, setbacks and additional costs that cost the company more than US$1 billion (about R$5.4 billion), according to public financial records.
Starliner’s first test mission, flown without a crew in late 2019, was riddled with errors. The vehicle failed in orbit, a symptom of software problems that included a coding error that set the internal clock to 11 hours.
A second uncrewed test flight in 2022 discovered additional software issues and problems with some of the vehicle’s thrusters.
Stich, the NASA program manager, indicated during a June 6 press conference that it’s possible engineers haven’t completely resolved these 2022 issues.
“We thought we had solved this problem,” said Stich, adding, “I think we are missing something fundamental that is happening inside the thruster.”
Michael Lembeck, an associate professor of aerospace engineering practice at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who was a consultant to Boeing’s spaceflight division from 2009 to 2014, told CNN that it would be difficult to determine whether additional ground testing could have detected the thruster problems in question.
But Lembeck emphasized that evaluating the success of this test mission is not as simple as directly comparing it to SpaceX’s inaugural crewed Crew Dragon flight.
For example, he said SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule — the direct predecessor to the Crew Dragon — completed more than a decade of unmanned cargo missions to the space station before the Crew Dragon took off.
“SpaceX had a head start with the cargo program,” Lembeck said. “I think they have an advantage that Boeing didn’t have. Boeing kind of had to build a manned vehicle from scratch.”
However, if this Starliner test mission encounters further setbacks, it could put Boeing in a situation where it would have to rely on its rival to bring Williams and Wilmore home.
“The embarrassing plan B is that a Crew Dragon would have to go and pick up the astronauts,” Lembeck said. The spacecraft “could be sent out with two crew and returned with four — and that would probably be the way to get home.”
Boeing’s Broader Problems
Boeing executives have repeatedly sought to make clear that the Starliner program operates independently of the company’s other units — including the commercial aircraft division that has been at the center of scandals for years.
“We have humans flying this vehicle. We always take this very seriously,” Nappi said during a press conference in April before the Starliner flight.
At the time, Nappi also stated that the Starliner team was operating at “maximum performance” and “really looking forward to executing” a safe mission.
When asked about that claim on Tuesday, Stich, the NASA executive, said Boeing and space agency officials had always expected to find additional issues that needed to be resolved during this test flight.
Williams mentioned this expectation during a pre-flight press conference, saying, “We always find things, and we’re going to keep finding things.
“Nothing will be absolutely perfect while we fly the spacecraft. …We feel very safe and comfortable with the way this spacecraft flies, and we have backup procedures in place should we need them,” Williams said.
Stich, however, acknowledged Tuesday that Boeing and NASA could have avoided some of the problems Starliner encountered: “Maybe we could have done different tests on the ground to characterize some of the (propellant problems) in advance,” he said. he.
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