With its next mission facing a delay of several months, Boeing Starliner, the first vehicle to carry astronauts into space, carried out a key spaceflight test on Saturday (July 27).
Engineers Testing StarlinerPrepare the Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters for a broader agency review that will evaluate the spacecraft’s readiness for landing. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are scheduled to depart in August if all goes according to plan.
“The team will assess the results of the test launch as it conducts a full investigation over the next few days ahead of a review of the agency’s readiness.” National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Official wrote in the statement On Saturday on X (formerly Twitter).
Starliner ran into problems when its first astronauts docked. International Space Station Starliner detached from the ISS on June 6. It was ultimately successful, but was delayed due to a helium leak and problems with five thrusters. Starliner is designed to leave the ISS in an emergency, but engineers are trying to figure out why these issues occurred before astronauts attempt a routine departure.
Figuring out what happened is key to preparing for the next mission, Starliner 1, which is scheduled to spend six months aboard the ISS in 2025. On Friday (July 28), NASA announced that it will postpone that mission until August 2025 after an earlier-than-anticipated winter.
Related: 50 days after launch to the ISS, the landing date for Boeing Starliner astronauts has yet to be set.
NASA and Boeing haven’t yet said how they’ll fix the Starliner issue — whether through design or changes to how future astronauts fire their thrusters — officials told reporters on Thursday (July 27). But for now, the launch of Starliner 1 will be delayed to “give Starliner more time to complete the new testing upgrades,” NASA’s Steve Stich told reporters. Stich is NASA’s commercial crew program manager.
Starliner today space The mission, known as Crew Flight Test (CFT), was originally expected to last 10 days. It’s now approaching 55 days in space, with the astronauts living on contingency supplies already stockpiled on the ISS. As the mission is still in development, there is uncertainty about the timeline, and NASA and Boeing Both of them were stressed before the mission.
in Blog PostBoeing officials said the new RCS tests were conducted with burns as short as 1.2 seconds to “check the performance of each thruster.” (The RCS has 28 thrusters, but engineers removed one thruster from testing a few weeks ago after determining it wouldn’t fire properly on the return to Earth.) Each thruster tested demonstrated peak thrust ranging from 97 percent to 102 percent.
“The helium system also remained stable,” Boeing officials wrote. Wilmore and Williams (both former U.S. Navy test pilots with years of experience in developmental aerospace programs) did not directly activate the thrusters but remained on board the Starliner to report on the situation to the ground.
Ground tests of the thrusters this month revealed why the CFT’s RCS had problems: Repeated firings, especially in conjunction with the Orbital Maneuvering and Control System (OMAC) thrusters, could cause the “doghouse” or insulation bay that protects the grouping of RCS thrusters to heat up. Thrusters strip away Teflon insulation NASA and Boeing also said the problem could not have been detected on the ground before the CFT flight.
Starliner is one of two systems funded by NASA to transport astronauts to the ISS; the other is SpaceXUsing a design based on SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon ISS vehicle, Crew Dragon made its first crewed test flight in 2020. Since testing, Crew Dragon has completed 11 ISS missions: eight six-month missions on behalf of NASA and three multi-week missions on behalf of Axiom Space.
Crew 9, SpaceX’s ninth mission to the ISS, is scheduled to launch as early as August 18, with Starliner due to return by then, according to NASA.
