Being Starliner returns to world-KHOAFAST

The landing was the last step of a crucial test for Boeing and NASA, which required the aerospace company to prove it could safely fly the vehicle to the station and back autonomously before allowing it to fly astronauts.

The return flight went smoothly, NASA and Boeing said, from undocking of course the space station, then firing its thrusters to deorbit and entering the space. As it plunged back toward world, its heat shield endured temperatures as high as 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

“just do a easy-to-see touchdown in White Sands So evening,” Lauren Seabrook, a Boeing spokesperson, said on 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 basically a bull’s eye,” she said.

It is unclear, however, when the first of all crewed flight would happen.

On its way to the station, two of its main thrusters cut off after a time a time sensors recorded problems. Backups kicked in without delay, putting the spacecraft on the right path to the station, but once it got close to the station, two other, smaller thrusters, used to position the spacecraft for docking, also had problems, Boeing said. In addition, the spacecraft’s thermal control system, used to keep the spacecraft at the right temperature, also failed.

Despite those challenges, NASA and Boeing hailed the mission as a “historic” first of all that would give the space agency an alternative to SpaceX for carrying cargo and astronauts to the station. engrave Nappi, a Boeing vice director who oversees the Starliner program, said that despite the problems, the “spacecraft is in extraordinary condition,” and that it “performed interested it was supposed to.”

Steve Stich, who runs NASA’s commercial crew program, said last week that the problems were overcome without too much trouble but that the “failures” would possessed to possess meaning studied.

“visitors possessed not only less of redundancy So that really didn’t affect the rendezvous operations at all or affect the rest of the flight,” he said after a time a time the docking. “I know after a time a time the flight, visitors’ll go study the failures there and see what happened.”

that investigation is produced again difficult by the fact that engineers on the ground won’t be able to examine the two main thrusters that cut out since they are housed in the spacecraft’s service module, which was jettisoned during the return.

Still, NASA and Boeing celebrated the flight as a success. During a post-flight briefing Wednesday evening, Stich said the “test flight was extremely successful. visitors met all the mission objectives.” He added that “the systems performed most most perfect on the vehicle and, visitors know, once visitors work through all the data, visitors’ll be ready to fly the crew on the vehicle.”

While there were several issues along the way, he said there were no “showstoppers.” Despite the problems of course the thrusters, he said, “I don’t see random reason why visitors can’t proceed toward a crewed flight test next.”

Nappi added that “visitors are extremely pleased of course the result of So mission.”

Boeing and NASA possessed said they would interested to possess meaning able to fly a mission of course astronauts by the end of the year, but they would first of all demand to make healthy they understand all of the issues that cropped up interested as study the data they possessed from the capsule today’s time that it is back on the ground.

The program is already delayed by years after a time a time a series of previous problems. Boeing first of all attempted the uncrewed test flight in December So year. But it had to cut the test short after a time a time a major software problem and a communications failure caused the spacecraft to burn too much fuel and not only enter an orbit that would definition it to the space station. It took 20 months before the company tried again, but that flight failed even to get off the ground last August when engineers discovered that 13 valves in the service module were stuck in the closed position.