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A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule will bring home two NASA astronauts who remained aboard the International Space Station for around 80 days due to issues with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft – marking a remarkable turn of events for the burgeoning aerospace giant .
The news comes after the space agency conducted a formal review on Saturday to decide whether it thought the Boeing Starliner vehicle would be safe enough to return home with its crew – or whether SpaceX’s workhorse Crew Dragon spacecraft would have to stand in for the day. save.
The Starliner vehicle, which carried astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the space station in early June, suffered problems with helium leaks and thrusters that suddenly stopped working on the front leg of its first crewed test flight. Engineers spent weeks trying to better understand the issues, and Boeing said as recently as August 2 that “confidence remains high” that the spacecraft would be able to return Williams and Wilmore to Earth.
However, NASA revealed during an Aug. 7 news briefing that the space agency had discussed the safety of the Starliner capsule – prompting the federal agency to more seriously consider flying the astronauts home on the SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle, which about a dozen flew. crewed mission to space from 2020.
On Saturday, NASA administrator Bill Nelson said NASA considered its extensive experience with spaceflight – both successful and unsuccessful – in making the decision. A poll of NASA representatives from the agency’s research, oversight and development departments and centers was unanimous, according to agency officials.
“We’ve made mistakes in the past: we lost two space shuttles because there wasn’t a culture where information could be passed on,” Nelson said. “There is risk in spaceflight, even at the safest and most normal level. And a test flight, by nature, is neither safe nor routine.”
SpaceX is already planning a routine mission to the International Space Station, carrying four astronauts as part of a standard crew rotation aboard the orbiting laboratory. But the mission, called Crew-9, will now be reconfigured to carry two astronauts on board instead of four.
That adjustment will leave two empty seats for Williams and Wilmore to occupy on Crew-9’s flight home. The astronauts will also join the Crew-9 team, and will be part of the official ISS tour. With that move, Williams and Wilmore will remain on site for an additional six months – the duration of their routine mission to the space station.
The reassignment to Crew-9 will push the duo back to February 2025 at the earliest.
Starliner, however, will fly home empty in early September, NASA said Saturday.
If the uncrewed return trip goes well, NASA will then face a critical decision: whether to grant Starliner official certification for human spaceflight — a step that would set the vehicle up for regular trips to orbit — even though it shouldn’t. accomplish his mission as planned.
No Boeing representatives were present at Saturday’s news conference.
In a statement Saturday, Boeing said it continues to “focus, first and foremost, on the safety of the crew and the spacecraft. We are completing the mission as determined by NASA, and we are preparing the spacecraft for a safe and successful unmanned return.”
Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said Saturday that there was little disagreement (between NASA and Boeing) about the level of risk.”
“It just depends on how you assess the risk,” Stich said. “We did it a little differently with our team than Boeing did.”
Nelson later said he is “100%” sure Boeing will address the issues and fix Starliner for another crewed mission at some point in the future.
SpaceX chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell also responded to the news with a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
“SpaceX is ready to support @NASA however we can,” Shotwell said.
Faulty trusters
Five of the Starliner’s 28 “reaction control thrusters” stopped working during the first stretch of Boeing’s test mission. All but one were found at the end.
And while Williams and Wilmore only expected to spend eight days in space, their stay aboard the orbiting laboratory has already been extended to about two months as engineers on the ground work to better understand the lubrication problems. .
Officials said they were able to recreate how the thrusters in space deteriorated during flight with tests on the ground. A possible root cause was heat building up inside the thrusters that could be causing insulation seals to bulge, restricting propellant flow, Boeing said.
Separately, seals degraded by exposure to propellant vapors can lead to issues with helium leaks, according to comments from Mark Nappi, manager of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program, on July 25.
However, NASA initially struggled to reach a consensus on how those issues might affect the astronauts’ return from space – and how much risk the problems would pose.
The ambiguity of the level of risk is why the agency is turning to SpaceX and its workhorse Crew Dragon vessel to step in, Stich said Saturday.
“The bottom line in bringing back Starliner is — there was too much uncertainty in predicting the thrusters,” he said. “It was too risky with the crew, so we decided to continue the uncrewed route.”
Starliner’s rocky path
NASA has repeatedly said that SpaceX’s ability to disrupt shows how the space agency deliberately designed its Commercial Crew Program – under which both Starliner and Crew Dragon were developed – to allow each spacecraft to serve as a backup to the spacecraft another.
“We have a new situation here and we have multiple options,” Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, said on August 7. deal with in the future — we could find ourselves in a situation where we have to return a Dragon (SpaceX) crew or a Soyuz (Russian) crew on a Starliner.
“That’s why we need multiple vehicles — so we have that option,” Bowersox added.
Still, the federal agency funded SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner at the same time in 2014. Crew Dragon has already been in operation for four years, and the Starliner program is hundreds of millions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.
Boeing’s development process has also been plagued by missteps.
For example, the first Starliner test mission – flown in 2019 without a crew – went into orbit and the flight was much shorter than expected. The vehicle ultimately did not join the space station as planned, and the result was revealed to be a sign of multiple software problems, including a coding error that set the internal clock by 11 hours.
A second uncrewed flight test in May 2022 revealed additional software issues, and mission teams addressed problems with some of the vehicle’s thrusters. However, the root cause of the trouble was lost on this crewed mission two years ago.
The Starliner vehicle’s eventual return to Earth, considered the most dangerous part of the mission, is likely to be a controversial issue. The autonomous vehicle will have to use its thrusters to aim itself precisely as it re-enters Earth’s thick atmosphere. The pressure and friction is expected to heat the exterior of the vehicle to about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 degrees Celsius).
Starliner’s parachutes must then deploy without release and slow the spacecraft before deploying airbags to expand and cushion the landing.
If the Starliner capsule is finally confirmed, it could join SpaceX’s Crew Dragon to make regular trips to the space station to rotate crew. Currently, these trips are occurring approximately every six months.
Weigh the costs
If the spacecraft is denied certification, however, it would be another blow to Boeing’s already damaged reputation. Missing the mark could cost the company millions of dollars more – on top of the roughly $1.5 billion the company has already recorded in losses on the Starliner program.
“We all wanted to complete the (Boeing Starliner) test flight with the team, and I think unanimously we’re disappointed not to be able to do that,” Bowersox said Saturday. But “you don’t want that disappointment to factor into your decision unhealthily.”
Boeing’s cost overruns have fueled recurring rumors that Boeing may not see the Starliner program through.
Nelson said Saturday, however, that he had recently spoken with Boeing’s new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, about the Starliner’s status.
“I told him how well Boeing worked with our team to come to this decision,” Nelson said, “and he let me know that they intend to continue working (on) the problems once Starliner is safely back and we have to. our redundancy and crew access to the space station.”
It is not yet clear, however, who will bear the cost of the additional testing and development that may be required to bring Starliner development to the finish line.
Nelson reiterated Saturday that his deal with Boeing is a “fixed-price contract” — meaning it’s designed to be lump sum only and that payments don’t grow with delays like with alternative, “cost-plus” contracts.
Nelson added, however, that discussions about how much Boeing is willing to pay for additional testing were not part of his conversation with the CEO.
“I don’t have the answer to that, and I don’t think we would,” Nelson said.
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