Boeing’s Starliner astronaut capsule returned from the International Space Station and landed in New Mexico on Wednesday, capping a high-stakes test flight as NASA’s next vehicle to carry humans into orbit.
Less than a week after launch from Cape Canaveral US Space Force Base in Florida, CST-100 starliner The capsule plunged into Earth’s atmosphere Wednesday evening ahead of a parachute-assisted descent over the desert of White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico. It touched down on time at 6:49 a.m. EDT (22:49 GMT).
The nearly five-hour return trip from the space station, an orbital outpost about 250 miles above Earth, checks off the final leg of a repeat test flight Boeing Tried for the first time in 2019, but failed to complete after running into software failures.
The latest test mission Starliner has been beset by repeated delays and costly engineering failures, a big step closer to providing NASA with a second reliable avenue to ferry astronauts to and from the space station.
The Starliner was lifted into orbit last Thursday atop an Atlas V rocket equipped by United Launch Alliance, a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture and achieved its main objective – a rendezvous with the ISS, even though it had several onboard thrusters along the way. I got spoiled.
Boeing engineers had to improvise a solution for a thermal control fault during the capsule’s final approach to the space station.
Since the resumption of crew flights to orbit from American soil in 2020, nine years after the spacecraft program ended, the US space agency has had to rely entirely on the billionaire Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule . Elon Musk’s private company SpaceX,
Previously, the only other option for access to the orbiting laboratory was to barge aboard Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft, an option that is currently less attractive in light of the enlarged US-Russian tensions over war Ukraine,
There’s a lot more on the line for Boeing, as the Chicago-based company scrambles to get out of constant woes in its jetliner business and space-defense unit. The Starliner program alone has cost the company around $600 million (approximately Rs 4,655 crore) in the last two and a half years.
An unfortunate first orbital test flight of the Starliner in late 2019 nearly ended with the loss of the vehicle following a software glitch that effectively thwarted the spacecraft’s ability to reach the space station.
Later problems with the Starliner’s propulsion system supplied by Aerojet Rocketdyne forced Boeing to make a second attempt to launch the capsule last summer.
The Starliner remained closed for nine more months, while the two companies disputed what caused the fuel valves to clog and which firm was responsible for fixing them.
The do-over test mission completed Wednesday could pave the way for Starliner to carry its first astronaut crew to the space station sometime next year, with a redesign of the Starliner’s propulsion system valves and pop ups in the middle. Thruster issues to be resolved are pending. -Mission.
The Parikrama Outpost is currently serving three US . is home to the crew of NASA cosmonaut, an Italian cosmonaut of the European Space Agency and three Russian cosmonauts. When the Starliner was towed to the station, some of the astronauts boarded the capsule to analyze the condition of its cabin.
© Thomson Reuters 2022