After spending just under a week on the space station, Boeing’s new passenger spacecraft, the CST-100 Starliner, returned to Earth this afternoon, landing unharmed with the help of parachutes and airbags in the New Mexico desert. The successful landing ended a critical Starliner test flight that demonstrated the ship’s ability to take off into space, dock with a station, and then return home safely.
The gum-shaped Boeing Starliner capsule was built in collaboration with NASA to launch the agency’s astronauts to and from the International Space Station, or ISS. The mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which has challenged private companies to build space taxis to transport people into low Earth orbit. But before NASA allowed its employees to board the spacecraft, the space agency wanted the Starliner to prove it could make it through all the stages of a flight to the International Space Station – without people on board.
By the end of the day, this unmanned test flight, dubbed OFT-2, concluded with Starliner taking all the important steps it was supposed to take. capsule successfully Launched into orbit May 19.travel into space on an Atlas V rocket; approach and Docked with the International Space Station on May 20.; She parted ways with the space station this afternoon before returning home. The flight was not entirely smooth. During the mission, Starliner had several problems with various thrusters, small engines used to maneuver and propel the ship through space. However, none of these problems proved fatal to the flight, and Starliner was able to complete OFT-2 as planned.
it was a lot bumpy road to get to this release. The name of this test flight, OFT-2, actually refers to Orbital Flight Test-2. That’s because it’s a test flight of the same test flight that Boeing attempted in 2019. In December of that year, it launched the Boeing Starliner without a crew on board, sending it into space on another Atlas V rocket. The Starliner caused the capsule to misfire its engines. after separation from the rocket, and eventually the spacecraft entered the wrong orbit. The problem kept the Starliner from reaching the space station, and Boeing was unable to demonstrate the spacecraft’s ability to dock with the International Space Station. Boeing had to get the spacecraft home early and managed to land the capsule at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico — the same spot where the Starliner landed today.
Boeing tried again last summer to launch the Starliner, but just hours before takeoff, the company stopped the countdown after learning of it. More than ten check valves are stuck and do not open properly.. Boeing has gone so far as to fix the issues, and the company says the valves are likely to be redesigned in the future. But now, two and a half years after the initial failed flight, the Starliner has finally proven that it can be launched autonomously and docked to the International Space Station, an important function that it will have to perform again and again once people are on board.
Landing is also an important task for Starliner to get passengers safely home. To demonstrate these capabilities for this flight, the capsule was delivered to the International Space Station at 2:36 pm ET, circled the station slowly, and then retired from the orbiting laboratory. At 18:05 EDT, the Starliner used its inboard thrusters to decelerate and eject from orbit, setting a course for the Earth’s surface. The spacecraft soon plunged into the planet’s atmosphere, where temperatures reached 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Starliner then used a series of parachutes to slow her descent before landing at White Sands on airbags to cushion her descent. It was Starliner’s second successful landing, with Boeing already offering to land the aircraft during its first failed test flight in 2019.
“This landing arrives at 5:49 p.m. CT, about six days after the mission began,” Brandi Dean, NASA Liaison Officer, said in a live stream of the landing. “Nice landing today on white sand.”
This landing caused little concern as the Starliner had several engine problems during the flight. When the capsule was launched into space last week, two of the 12 engines used by Starliner failed to reach the correct orbit. Boeing said the pressure drop in the chamber caused the engines to shut down earlier. In the end, Starliner’s flight control system was able to divert to the backup engine in time, and the capsule entered orbit as planned. However, these same thrusters were needed to de-orbit the Starliner, but it appears to be working as planned despite two failed thrusters.
There were other errors during the flight. Several different smaller thrusters that were used to maneuver the Starliner during docking also failed due to low chamber pressure. However, this did not stop the capsule from sticking to the International Space Station. “We have a lot of redundancy that didn’t really impact collision operations,” Steve Stich, NASA’s program manager for the Commercial Crew Program, said during a press conference after docking. On top of that, the Boeing team noted that some of the Starliner thermal systems used to cool the spacecraft exhibited extremely low temperatures, and the engineering team had to deal with this during docking.
Starliner is still achieving many of its goals as it docks with the International Space Station. This weekend, astronauts aboard the International Space Station opened the Starliner’s hatch, entered the ship, and retrieved cargo delivered to the station. The capsule delivered about 600 pounds of cargo to Earth, as did rocketman Rosie, a model who went inside the Starliner to simulate what it would look like when people boarded it.
Now that Starliner has returned to Earth, there is a lot of work to be done. In the coming months, NASA and Boeing will look into the shortcomings of this flight and determine if Starliner is ready to take humans into space on a test flight called CFT for a manned flight that could take place by the end of the year. . year. This would be a huge achievement for Boeing, which has lagged far behind NASA’s other commercial crew provider, SpaceX. SpaceX has already completed five manned flights for NASA aboard the Crew Dragon capsule, which carried its first passengers in 2020.
But if Starliner could fly with humans, NASA would finally have what it always wanted: two different American companies capable of putting the agency’s astronauts into orbit.
