Boeing’s Starliner capsule is going to come under scrutiny now that it’s back on Earth.
Starliner was launched on May 19, kicking off a crucial uncrewed demonstration mission to the international space station called Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2). The spacecraft docked with the orbiting lab a day later, then returned to Earth on Wednesday May 25, to land as planned at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
OFT-2 was designed to show that Starliner is ready to ferry astronauts to and from orbit for NASA, which signed a contract with Boeing for such services in 2014. And NASA and Boeing don’t plan to waste time preparing Starliner for a crewed flight. .
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At a press briefing shortly after the Starliner touched down on Wednesday, Mark Nappi, Boeing’s vice president and commercial crew program manager, said crews would soon move the vehicle to a staging area for the prepare to be returned to the company’s facilities at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. in Florida, where it is expected to arrive around June 9. Then, Nappi said, Boeing will begin preparing Starliner for its first crewed mission, known as Crew Flight Test (CFT).
That being said, NASA will need to review data from OFT-2 before certifying Starliner for crewed flight. And there will be problems to check, because the mission did not go perfectly. For example, two of Starliner’s thrusters failed during its orbit insertion burn, which happened about half an hour after launch. (A backup thruster fired at the right time and Starliner managed to complete the burn.)
A target date for the CFT has not been determined, and NASA and Boeing have not yet announced which astronauts will participate in the mission. However, leaders of both organizations expressed hope that the test flight, which will carry astronauts to the orbiting laboratory, will take place before the end of the year and said details of a launch date and crew complement could be finalized this summer.
Boeing isn’t the only company with a contract with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. SpaceX also signed one in 2014 and has already launched four operational crewed missions to the space station with its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule.
During Wednesday’s post-landing press briefing, NASA commercial crew program manager Steve Stich referred to a photo he saw with Starliner and Dragon docked at the space station.
“You know, I kind of get the creeps talking about it, because between Starliner and Dragon, that’s really what this commercial program has really been all along – having these two different companies, with the great systems they’ve developed, provides crew transportation to the space station under this new commercial crew model,” Stitch said. “And the flight we just landed today demonstrates that the Starliner is an excellent vehicle for crew transport.”
NASA astronaut Suni Williams is one of the few people to have trained to fly in Starliner, and she worked with Boeing teams throughout the development of the vehicle. During a press briefing on May 18, Williams was already looking forward to Starliner’s return, saying, “We want the spacecraft back so we can start testing the environmental control system… There’s a lot of work to do. in front of us before arriving at the crewed flight, but we are chomping at the bit.”
OFT-2 was Starliner’s second attempt for an uncrewed mission to the space station. During the first, launched in December 2019, Starliner suffered software problems and got stuck in the wrong orbit for a date. And OFT-2 was supposed to be launched last summer, but routine checks revealed more than a dozen valves stuck in Starliner’s propulsion systema problem that ended up stalling the mission for more than eight months.
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