Zoom / Boeing says its Starliner spacecraft is ready to land at the Florida launch site.
Boeing
Boeing and NASA say the Starliner spacecraft is ready to fly, with a second unmanned test mission on the spacecraft scheduled for May 19.
It’s been nine months since the spacecraft’s standard preflight check, then sat on top of a rocket at a Florida launch site, found that 13 of the 24 oxidation valves in Starliner’s propulsion system were stuck. The discovery was made hours after takeoff.
Since then, engineers and technicians at Boeing and NASA have worked to fully understand why the valves are stuck and fix the problem. They found that the oxidant of nitrous oxide, which had been loaded into the spacecraft 46 days before launch, combined with the humidity of the environment to create nitric acid, which started the corrosion process in the aluminum body of the valve.
During a teleconference with reporters on Tuesday, Boeing and NASA officials discussed steps they had taken to improve the issue of Starliner’s upcoming test flight. Michelle Parker, vice president and deputy general manager of Boeing Space and Launch, said the valves remain the same on the vehicle, but technicians have sealed roads where moisture can get into the propulsion system. They also clean the moisture from the valves using nitrogen gas and load propellants into the Starliner closer to the start.
With these mitigations undertaken, Starliner will soon be placed on an Atlas V rocket built by the United Launch Alliance. The Starliner was actually scheduled to be launched at the Atlas V launch complex in Florida on Wednesday, but Boeing said deployment was “paused” due to a hydraulic leak in the United Launch Alliance’s vehicle.
So it goes with Boeing’s efforts to start and stop Starliner. The company has been working on the vehicle since at least 2010, when it was called Crew Space Transportation-100 or CST-100. Starliner made its debut flight in December 2019, but problems arose just minutes after takeoff, when the spacecraft caught the wrong “past mission time” from its Atlas V rocket. In addition, there were difficulties in communicating with ground stations. NASA and Boeing flight controllers have been able to restore communication with Starliner and help it reach orbit. However, due to the fuel consumed during these activities, Starliner failed to achieve its primary goal of demonstrating a safe connection to the International Space Station.
Advertising
There were also problems during the return to Earth. Another software bug caught and corrected just hours before the vehicle returned to Earth through the atmosphere could cause Starliner service module pushers to malfunction. The car was almost lost a second time.
These problems prompted NASA to declare Starliner’s first test flight a “high-visibility close-up call” and to launch a long-running investigation and deep immersion into Starliner’s software problems. Boeing agreed to pay $ 410 million for a second test flight and eventually prepared the Orbital Flight Test-2 mission, which reached the site in the summer of 2021. The vehicle then had a problem with a sticky valve. Finally, after all this, the company has Starliner back on site, ready to restart.
NASA, of course, currently has the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft to transport its astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Crew Dragon has carried out five largely flawless crew missions since mid-2020, but with high tensions between the United States and Russia, NASA would very much like to have a second option to transport the crew to reach the station.
This means that there is great interest from NASA in the second Starliner test. Success with this test flight is likely to make Boeing fly with the crew to the space station for the first time in early 2023.
“This is a really important step in our ongoing goal of having two opportunities to transport the United States to the ISS,” said NASA’s Katie Luders, head of human space operations. “Stable crew services are really important to our ongoing commitment to our research, the scientific and technological development we do on the ISS, and it is crucial to achieving our research goals.”
Add Comment