by Atlas 5 rocket carrying astronauts For the first time in six decades the first time for a Monday night blastoff was to boost Boeing’s long-delayed Starliner crew ferry into orbit for its first pilot test flight to the International Space Station.
Running years behind schedule and more than a billion dollars over budget, the Starliner is Boeing’s answer to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, an already operational spacecraft that carried 50 astronauts, cosmonauts and civilians into orbit in 13 flights, 12 of which to the space station.
NASA funded the development of the two spacecraft to ensure that the agency would be able to send crews to the outpost even if one company’s ferry was grounded for any reason.
Astronauts ready to launch
Although Boeing has taken longer than expected to prepare its ship for crewed flights, all systems were turned on for launch from pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 10:34 pm EDT.
At the controls will be a mission commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williamsformer Navy test pilots and active duty NASA astronauts with four earlier spaceflights to their credit, 11 spacewalks between them and a combined 500 days in orbit.
Like SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, the Starliner is equipped with a “full envelope” abort system that can quickly drive the capsule from the booster in the event of a major malfunction at any point from the launch pad to orbit.
But if all goes well, the Atlas 5’s Centaur upper stage will launch the Starliner into initial orbit 15 minutes after liftoff. The astronauts will then monitor two quick thruster firings to fine-tune the ship’s orbit before taking their turn testing the spacecraft’s computer-assisted manual control system.
As with any other space station rendezvous, the Starliner will approach the laboratory from behind and below, loop up to a point directly in front of the outpost and then move in to Å at the port of the Harmony module forward at 12:46 Wednesday.
During the final approach, Wilmore and Williams will again test the capsule’s manual controls, ensuring that future crews can alter the spacecraft’s trajectory or orientation at will if necessary.
The Starliner is also equipped with a fully manual backup system that allows the crew to directly command the ship’s thrusters using a joystick-like hand controller, bypassing the spacecraft’s flight computers. Wilmore and Williams will test that system after they leave the station around May 15 to begin the journey back to Earth.
If the Starliner test flight goes well, NASA managers plan to certify it for regular crew rotation flights, sending one Crew Dragon and one Starliner each year to deliver long-duration crew members to the station for six mission trips month.
“Crucial Milestone”
Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, called the Starliner Crew Flight test, or CFT, “a really important milestone.”
“Let me remind everybody again, this is a new spacecraft,” he told reporters last week. “We certainly have some unknowns in this mission, we may come across things we don’t expect. But our job now is to stay alert and continue to look for issues.”
Although he said he was confident the Starliner was up to the task, Free said he didn’t want to “get too far ahead” since the crew has yet to have a successful mission. But “when we do,” he said, “and when we certify Starliner, the United States will have two unique human space vehicles that provide critical redundancy for ISS access.”
But it was not easy.
After the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011, NASA awarded two Commercial Crew Program contracts in 2014, one to SpaceX worth $2.6 billion and the other to Boeing for $4.2 billion, to encourage the development of independent spacecraft capable of astronauts transport to and from the International Space Station.
The target date for initial pilot CCP flights was 2017. Funding shortfalls in Congress and technical snags have slowed development, including an explosion during a ground test that destroyed SpaceX’s Dragon Crew.
But the California rocket builder finally began pilot flights in May 2020, successfully sending two NASA astronauts on a Crew Dragon test flight to the space station.
Since then, SpaceX has sent eight operational crew rotation flights to the station, three research missions to the laboratory funded by the Houston-based. Space Axiom and a commercial only, a two-person trip to low-Earth orbit paid for by billionaire pilot and businessman Jared Isaacman. In total, 50 people flew into orbit aboard Crew Dragons.
It was a different story for Boeing’s Starliner.
During an initial unpiloted test flight in December 2019, a software error prevented the ship’s flight computer from loading the correct launch time from its counterpart aboard Atlas 5.
As a result, a required orbit insertion burn did not occur on time and due to unrelated communication issues, flight controllers were unable to regain control in time to proceed with space station deployment.
The software problems were addressed after the Starliner landed, along with various other issues that came to light in a post-flight review. Boeing chose to conduct a second test flight, at its own expense, but the company ran into stuck propulsion system valves in the Starliner service module. Engineers were unable to resolve the problem and the capsule was removed from Atlas 5 and returned to the processing facility for troubleshooting.
Engineers ultimately traced the problem to moisture, likely from high humidity and torrential rain after rollout to the pad, which chemically reacted with the thruster drive to cause corrosion. The corrosion prevented the valves from opening on command.
To clear the launch path the following May, the valves were replaced in a new service module and the system was changed to prevent water intrusion on the launch pad. The second Starliner test flight in May 2022 was successful, docking at the space station as planned and returning to Earth with a pinpoint landing.
But after the flight, engineers discovered new problems: trouble with parachute harness connectors and concerns about protective tape wrapped around wiring that could catch fire in a short circuit.
Work to correct those issues pushed the first crewed flight from 2023 to 2024. When all was said and done, Boeing spent more than $1 billion of its own money to pay for the additional test flight and corrective actions.
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