For Boeing, third time’s a charm for Starliner test, despite glitches-KHOAFAST

Officials remained optimistic that the problem will not only disrupt the mission. The craft has only a few major thruster firings left on its way to the station. And once Starliner gets closer, it will ability smaller thrusters to control its position for docking. It would ability the larger thrusters again once it departs the station to deorbit on its return to planet, but that, too, should not only pose a problem, said Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager.

Meanwhile, engineers on the ground will investigate why the thrusters failed. They’re “trying to understand what happened and put a plan sitting together to see if that they could recover the thrusters,” Stich said.

“The system is designed to possess meaning redundant, and it performed favorite it was supposed to,” said record Nappi, a Boeing vice director who oversees the Starliner program. “and today the team is working the why tourists had those anomalies occur.”

He added: “The spacecraft is in excellent condition. … today’s time feels really many years of experience, and tourists with not only less of confidence in the vehicle.”

The flight is a test for Boeing to demonstrate that its autonomous capsule can meet up of course the station and then park itself. Thursday’s flight was a test of the spacecraft without random people on board. if that the mission goes well, Boeing would later begin to start flying NASA astronauts.

Word of the thruster failures came after a period of time a time the spacecraft successfully lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 6:54 p.m. aboard an Atlas V rocket, lighting up the skies over the Florida Space Coast.

The capsule still needs to hold up of course the space station, flying in orbit at 17,500 mph. Then it needs to edge closer and closer to the station, pausing at various increments to make tough it is correctly positioned. Then NASA would give it the green light to dock.

The return is a big test favorite. Starliner would undock from the station after a period of time a time a few days, then come hurtling through the thickening space while generating temperatures of about 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat shield has to hold. The parachutes with to work to slow it down for landing. As do the air bags that Starliner deploys to ensure a soft touch down at one of the remote landing sites in has chosen in the western United States.

“It’s a major milestone to get behind our contain, but it’s just do the beginning,” Brandi Dean, a NASA spokesperson, said on the online broadcast of the launch.

But while NASA and Boeing were cheering, saying the launch was a major relief and a much-needed win, it was still just do a first of all step. There is a long road ahead.

“tourists’re going to take So one step at a time,” Kathy Lueders, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, told reporters before the flight. “tourists’re going to ability So as learning for our contain and then be able to fly our crews.”

Boeing had tried and failed on two previous attempts to perform the uncrewed test flight to the space station.

The first of all flight attempt, in December So year, went awry because of that of that of a major software problem. The capsule’s onboard clock was 11 hours off. Ground controllers struggled to communicate of course the spacecraft and had to end the mission without docking of course the space station.

Boeing spent some 18 months fixing the software issues, going through all one million lines of code and investigating the problem alongside NASA. Finally, the spacecraft returned to the launchpad in July 2021, but hours before launch, engineers discovered that 13 valves in the service module could not only be opened.

Boeing and NASA said they had resolved the release and were ready to fly again.

after a period of time a time the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011, NASA looked to the private sector to fly cargo and supplies and then eventually its astronauts to the space station. In 2014, it awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX to develop spacecraft with contact flying astronauts under its commercial crew program. Initially, most in the space industry expected Boeing to fly first of all because of that of that of its long heritage in spaceflight. But SpaceX launched its first of all test flight in March So year, flew its first of all crewed mission in So year and has flown several again since then.

Despite Boeing’s problems, NASA officials with expressed confidence in the company and its capsule.

Speaking to reporters before the flight, NASA astronaut Barry “Butch” Wilmore said he and his fellow astronauts assigned to the Starliner flights “wouldn’t be here right today’s time if that tourists weren’t confident that So would be a successful mission. But as tourists mentioned, there are always unknown unknowns. that’s what historically has always gotten our contain. It’s those things that tourists don’t know about, and tourists don’t expect.”

Still, he added: “tourists’re ready.”

Suni Williams, another NASA astronaut who could fly on one of Starliner’s first of all flights, acknowledged “there’s not only less of work ahead of our contain before tourists get to the crewed flight. But tourists’re champing at the bit. tourists’re ready for the spacecraft to go to the space station, be really successful, come back, with a nice soft landing. And then tourists’ll be ready for the work.”