The propulsion system that NASA worried about did its job today as Boeing’s Starliner space capsule backed away from the International Space Station to begin an uncrewed, autonomous descent back to Earth.
“She’s on her way home,” NASA astronaut Sunita Williams said as the spacecraft, christened Calypso, cleared a 4-by-2-kilometer (2.5-by-1.2-mile) region around the space station known as the approach ellipsoid.
NASA reported no issues with a set of maneuvering thrusters that fired to maneuver the empty capsule during the undocking at about 6 p.m. ET (3 p.m. PT). Five of the 28 thrusters malfunctioned on June 6 during Calypso’s docking with the space station. One thruster was taken offline for today’s undocking due to performance concerns.
Calypso’s propulsion issues — including several helium leaks in the pressurization system — sparked weeks of troubleshooting by NASA and Boeing. Engineers determined that the thruster problems were caused by overheating that exceeded the propulsion system’s design standards. Two weeks ago, NASA decided that the uncertainties surrounding the system’s performance were too great to risk having Williams and her Starliner crewmate, Butch Wilmore, ride back to Earth on the craft.
Instead, they’ll remain on the station for months longer than originally planned. To accommodate the personnel shift, NASA reduced the size of the next scheduled crew, known as Crew-9, from four to two spacefliers. That crew is due to go into orbit in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on Sept. 24. Williams and Wilmore will join Crew-9 and return to Earth in the SpaceX capsule next February.
If all goes according to plan, Calypso will use its propulsion system once more to set itself up for re-entry and a parachute-aided landing at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico at about 10 p.m. MT (9 p.m. PT). That’s likely to be a make-or-break moment for Boeing and Starliner.
The Starliner development program has suffered through years of delays and about $1.6 billion in cost overruns that Boeing has had to absorb. An uncrewed test flight went awry in 2019, forcing a re-do in 2022.
After Calypso’s return at the end of what was meant to be Starliner’s first crewed round trip, NASA and Boeing will look at the data and determine the program’s future course.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon has been successfully flying astronauts to and from the space station since 2020, but during a news briefing last month, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said it was important to have Starliner as well.
“We need two [types of] spacecraft to have the redundancy in case one is not able to take crew to and from the International Space Station,” Nelson told reporters.
Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, also signaled that the space agency would stick with Boeing. “We’ve had two good partners, Boeing and SpaceX, when it comes to commercial crew,” he said. “When they have problems, we don’t just throw rocks at them, or tell them that we don’t like them. We work with them to get through those problems.”
https://ift.tt/YISBtCv September 07, 2024 at 12:10AM GeekWire
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