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Boeing’s Starliner space capsule landed in the New Mexico desert on Wednesday, completing a six-day mission that finally reached the International Space Station and could lead to astronaut flights.
The capsule, without any crew on board, landed on schedule at 18:49 Eastern time at the White Sands missile range in New Mexico under three parachutes. The airbags softened the landing.
The landing was the final step in a crucial test for Boeing and NASA, which required the aerospace company to prove it could fly safely with the vehicle to and from the station autonomously before allowing it to fly with astronauts.
The return flight went smoothly, NASA and Boeing said, from disembarking the space station, then launching its pushers to exit orbit and enter the atmosphere. As it dived back to Earth, its heat shield withstood temperatures up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Just a beautiful landing in White Sands tonight,” said Lauren Seabrook, a Boeing spokesman, during the live broadcast of the landing.
She added that the spacecraft landed about three-tenths of a mile southeast of the landing site, “which is actually an eye,” she said.
However, it is unclear when the first manned flight will take place.
On the way to the station, two of its main engines broke off after sensors detected problems. The backups worked without delay, putting the spacecraft on the right track to the station, but as it approached the station, two other, smaller thrusters used to position the spacecraft to dock also had problems, Boeing said. In addition, the spacecraft’s thermal control system used to maintain the spacecraft’s proper temperature was also damaged.
Despite these challenges, NASA and Boeing hailed the mission as a “historic” first to give the space agency an alternative to SpaceX to transport cargo and astronauts to the station. Mark Napie, Boeing’s vice president of Starliner, said that despite the problems, “the spacecraft is in excellent condition” and that “it is working as it should.”
Steve Stitch, who heads NASA’s sales team program, said last week that the problems had been overcome without much trouble, but that the “failures” needed to be investigated.
“We have a lot of cuts, so it really didn’t affect the meeting operations at all, nor did it affect the rest of the flight,” he said after the jump. “I know that after the flight we will go to investigate the failures there and see what happened.”
This investigation is hampered by the fact that earth engineers will not be able to study the two main pushers, which are interrupted because they are located in the service module of the spacecraft, which was discarded during the return.
However, NASA and Boeing celebrated the flight as a success. During a briefing after the flight on Wednesday night, Stitch said that “the test flight was extremely successful. We have fulfilled all the objectives of the mission. “He added that” the systems are performing great on the vehicle and, you know, once we have processed all the data, we will be ready to manage the crew of the vehicle. “
Although there were several problems along the way, he said there were no “exhibitions”. Despite the problems with the pushers, he said: “I see no reason why we can not proceed to the next flight test with a crew.”
Napi added that “we are extremely pleased with the outcome of this mission.”
Boeing and NASA have said they would like to be able to fly on a mission with astronauts by the end of the year, but will first need to make sure they understand any issues and study the data they have from the capsule now that it’s back. on the ground.
The program has been delayed for years after a series of previous problems. Boeing first attempted an unmanned test flight in December 2019. But it had to suspend the test after a major software problem and communication failure caused the spacecraft to burn too much fuel and not enter orbit to take it to the space station. It took 20 months for the company to try again, but the flight failed to even land last August when engineers discovered that 13 valves in the service module were stuck in a closed position.
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