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The third attempt was the lure of Boeing’s Starliner mission after launching its first crewed flight test on Wednesday, in a milestone a decade in the making.
The new spacecraft’s highly anticipated, people-packed journey lifted off atop an Atlas V rocket at 10:52 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Senior NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams embark on a journey that will take them to the International Space Station in the Starliner capsule.
Weather conditions were 90% favorable for launch Wednesday morning, with cumulus clouds the only concern, according to the U.S. Space Force’s 45th Aeronautical Squadron.
The mission, known as the Crew Flight Test, is the result of Boeing’s efforts to develop a spacecraft to rival SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule and expand U.S. options to transport astronauts to the space station under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The federal agency’s initiative aims to improve collaboration with private sector partners.
The flight marked only the sixth inaugural voyage of a manned spacecraft in U.S. history, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at a press conference in May.
“It all started with Mercury, then it started with Gemini, then Apollo, the space shuttle, then (SpaceX’s) Dragon and now Starliner,” Nelson said.
Williams also made history as the first woman to fly such a mission.
The historic flight has big goals
“This is another milestone in this extraordinary history of NASA,” Nelson said after the launch on Wednesday. “And I want to extend my personal congratulations to the entire team, who went through a lot of trials and tribulations. But they had perseverance, and that’s what we do at NASA. We won’t start until it’s right.”
Astronauts will spend just over 24 hours traveling to the space station.
After docking around 12:15 a.m. ET on Thursday, Williams and Wilmore will spend eight days in the orbiting laboratory, joining the seven astronauts and cosmonauts already on board.
The Starliner craft is a crucial pump needed to repair the space station’s urine processing machinery, which failed on May 29.
“This urine processor takes all of the crew’s urine and processes it in the first step of the water recovery system,” said Dana Weigel, NASA’s International Space Station Program manager. “It then sends it to a water processor, which turns it into drinking water. “The station was originally designed to be a closed loop.”
Urine now has to be stored in containers on board, so the Starliner’s expected arrival at the space station can’t come soon enough.
“As for the pump replacement, we will do it as quickly as possible,” said Joel Montalbano, deputy administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate. “My hope is that we can get it done this week. If not, it will be early next week.”
Astronauts will test various aspects of the Starliner’s capabilities, including the spacecraft’s thruster performance, how the spacesuits work inside the capsule, and manual piloting when the crew needs to disable the spacecraft’s autopilot.
According to Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, at a May 31 press conference, Williams and Wilmore will also test Starliner’s “safe haven” feature, which is designed to offer space station crews a haven in case of trouble.
When it’s time to return home, the astronauts will return using the same Starliner capsule and land by parachute at one of several designated locations in the southwestern United States.
NASA officials shared that astronauts Williams and Wilmore could stay at the station a little longer. The earliest possible landing date is June 14.
“We have a predetermined landing date with this launch date, but I want to emphasize that no one should get too excited about that date,” said Ken Bowersox, deputy administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate. “A lot of conditions need to be right before we can bring the Starliner home, and we will wait until the conditions are right and we have met the test objectives before we do that.”
Stich added that the only issue mission teams considered was a system on the Starliner called a sublimator, which provides cooling during the launch and landing phase.
“What this does is essentially creates a block of ice,” he said. “And then when heat is transferred to the ice box, a tiny thin layer of the ice turns into steam, which carries the heat away. “We used a little more water than we expected.”
The team will evaluate the sublimator’s data to learn more about how the system works.
Years of development disruptions, test flight problems and other costly setbacks slowed the Starliner’s path to the launch pad. Meanwhile, SpaceX, Boeing’s rival under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, has become the primary transportation provider for the space agency’s astronauts.
When asked about the relationship between Boeing and SpaceX, which has long been seen as a rivalry, Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager for the Boeing Commercial Crew Program, said he believes others view it as a rivalry.
“We don’t see this as a competition,” Nappi said. “We have two providers going to the International Space Station and SpaceX is there and we are there right now. “So this is something NASA planned for, and we achieved it.”
This mission could be the last major milestone before NASA evaluates Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft as ready for routine operations to carry astronauts and cargo to the space station.
Nelson said that after receiving Starliner certification, the United States will have two ways to reach the International Space Station, which is why the Commercial Crew Program was launched in the first place.
“When we expand our spacecraft fleet, we expand our access to the stars,” Nelson said.
Weeks of troubleshooting
A series of problems led to the cancellation of previous crewed launch attempts on May 6 and June 1.
Two hours before the launch attempt on May 6, engineers detected a problem with the valve in the second stage, or upper part, of the Atlas V rocket, built by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The entire stack, including the rocket and spacecraft, was retrieved from the launch pad for testing and repair.
The teams also studied a small helium leak in the spacecraft service module, a “design flaw” in the propulsion system, and evaluated the Starliner capsule’s parachutes.
The Starliner was just 3 minutes and 50 seconds away from liftoff Saturday afternoon when an automatic abort was triggered by the ground launch sequencer or the computer launching the rocket.
United Launch Alliance technicians and engineers evaluated ground support equipment over the weekend by examining three large computers housed in a shelter at the base of the launch pad. Each computer is identical and provides triple redundancy to ensure safe launch of crewed missions.
“Imagine a big rack, a big computer, where the functions of the computer as a controller are individually split into individual boards or printed circuit boards,” Tory Bruno, president and CEO of United Launch Alliance, said at a news conference Saturday. . “They are all independent, but together they form an integrated controller.”
Cards inside computers are responsible for different key systems that need to happen before launch, such as releasing bolts at the base of the rocket so it can take off after ignition.
During the last four minutes before launch, all three computers must communicate and agree with each other. But during Saturday’s countdown, a card in one of the computers was six seconds slower to respond than the other two computers, according to Bruno; This indicated that something wasn’t right and triggered an automatic wait.
Over the weekend, engineers evaluated computers, power supplies, and networking between computers. The team attributed the problem to a single ground power supply in one of the computers that powered the computer boards responsible for key countdown events; this included the supply valves for the rocket’s upper stage, which caused a problem during the countdown. Here’s an update shared by NASA.
Starliner crews reported no signs of physical damage to the computer and removed the computer and replaced it with a spare computer. According to the ULA team, other computers and their boards were also evaluated and all perform normally as expected.
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