Boeing spacecraft carrying two astronauts lifts off on historic voyage
The third attempt was the charm for Boeing’s Starliner mission after launching its first crewed flight test Wednesday in a milestone that has been a decade in the making.
The new spacecraft’s highly anticipated voyage with humans on board lifted off atop an Atlas V rocket at 10:52 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Veteran NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are riding aboard the Starliner capsule on a journey that takes them to the International Space Station.
Weather conditions were 90% favorable for a Wednesday morning launch, with the only concern being cumulus clouds, according to the US Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron.
The mission, known as the Crew Flight Test, is the culmination of Boeing’s efforts to develop a spacecraft to rival SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule and expand the United States’ options for ferrying astronauts to the space station under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The federal agency’s initiative aims to foster collaboration with private industry partners.
The flight marks only the sixth inaugural journey of a crewed spacecraft in US history, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson noted in a May news conference.
“It started with Mercury, then with Gemini, then with Apollo, the space shuttle, then (SpaceX’s) Dragon — and now Starliner,” Nelson said.
Williams also made history as the first woman to fly aboard such a mission.
Historic flight has lofty goals
“This is another milestone in this extraordinary history of NASA,” Nelson said Wednesday after the launch. “And I want to give my personal congratulations to the whole team that went through a lot of trial and tribulation. But they had perseverance and that’s what we do at NASA. We don’t launch until it’s right.”
The astronauts will spend just over 24 hours traveling to the space station.
After docking around 12:15 p.m. ET Thursday, Williams and Wilmore are set to spend eight days living in the orbiting laboratory, joining the seven astronauts and cosmonauts already on board.
Aboard Starliner is a crucial pump needed to fix the space station’s urine processor assembly, which failed on May 29.
“That urine processor takes all of the crew’s urine and processes it in the first step of a water recovery system,” said Dana Weigel, manager for NASA’s International Space Station Program. “It then sends it downstream to a water processor which turns it into drinking water. The station’s really designed to be a closed loop.”
Now, the urine has to be stored onboard in containers, so Starliner’s anticipated arrival to the space station can’t come soon enough.
“On the pump change, we’re gonna get to that as soon as we can,” said Joel Montalbano, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate. “My hope is we get to it this week. If not, it’ll be early next week.”
The astronauts will test various aspects of Starliner’s capabilities, including the spacecraft’s thruster performance, how their spacesuits function within the capsule, and manual piloting in case the crew needs to override the spacecraft’s autopilot.
Williams and Wilmore will also test Starliner’s “safe haven” capability, designed to offer the space station crew a shelter if there is a problem, according to Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, during a May 31 news conference.
When it’s time to head home, the astronauts will return using the same Starliner capsule and parachute to a landing at one of several designated locations across the southwestern United States.
NASA officials shared that astronauts Williams and Wilmore may enjoy a slightly extended stay aboard the station. The earliest possible landing date is June 14.
“We’ve got a prescribed landing date that goes along with this launch date, but I just want to emphasize that nobody should get too excited about that date,” said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate. “We have to have a lot of conditions that are just right before we bring the Starliner home and we’re going to wait till the conditions are right and we’ve accomplished the test objectives before we do that.”
Now, the urine has to be stored onboard in containers, so Starliner’s anticipated arrival to the space station can’t come soon enough.
“On the pump change, we’re gonna get to that as soon as we can,” said Joel Montalbano, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate. “My hope is we get to it this week. If not, it’ll be early next week.”
The astronauts will test various aspects of Starliner’s capabilities, including the spacecraft’s thruster performance, how their spacesuits function within the capsule, and manual piloting in case the crew needs to override the spacecraft’s autopilot.
Williams and Wilmore will also test Starliner’s “safe haven” capability, designed to offer the space station crew a shelter if there is a problem, according to Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, during a May 31 news conference.
When it’s time to head home, the astronauts will return using the same Starliner capsule and parachute to a landing at one of several designated locations across the southwestern United States.
NASA officials shared that astronauts Williams and Wilmore may enjoy a slightly extended stay aboard the station. The earliest possible landing date is June 14.
“We’ve got a prescribed landing date that goes along with this launch date, but I just want to emphasize that nobody should get too excited about that date,” said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate. “We have to have a lot of conditions that are just right before we bring the Starliner home and we’re going to wait till the conditions are right and we’ve accomplished the test objectives before we do that.”
“Imagine a large rack that is a big computer where the functions of the computer as a controller are broken up separately into individual cards or printed wire circuit boards,” said Tory Bruno, president and CEO of United Launch Alliance, during a Saturday news conference. “They’re all stand-alone, but together, it’s an integrated controller.”
The cards within the computers are responsible for different key systems that must occur before a launch, such as releasing bolts at the rocket’s base so it can lift off after ignition.
During the final four minutes before launch, all three computers must communicate and agree with one another. But during Saturday’s countdown, a card on one of the computers was six seconds slower in responding than the other two computers, indicating that something was not correct and triggering an automatic hold, according to Bruno.
Over the weekend, engineers evaluated the computers, their power supply and network communications between the computers. The team isolated the issue to a single ground power supply within one of the computers, which provides power to the computer cards responsible for key countdown events — including the replenishment valves for the rocket’s upper stage, which also caused an issue during the countdown, according to an update shared by NASA.
Starliner teams reported no signs of physical damage to the computer, which they removed and replaced with a spare. The other computers and their cards were also assessed, and all of them are performing normally as expected, according to the ULA team.
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/05/science/nasa-boeing-starliner-launch-scn/index.html
Source: CNN.com
