It’s all systems go for a second attempt to launch Boeing’s often-delayed Starliner crew shuttle Saturday on a long-awaited test flight to the International Space Station, the capsule’s first with astronauts aboard, they said. on Friday NASA managers.
“From the standpoint of the station, from our crew, from our ground crews, we’re ready to go fly this mission,” said Dana Weigel, NASA’s space station program manager. “We are thrilled to be on the cusp of this historic mission.”
United Launch Alliance
Liftoff of the Starliner atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket is targeted for Saturday at 12:25 p.m. EDT, around the time Earth’s rotation brings pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station into orbit. of the station.
ULA engineers are expected to begin fueling the rocket around 6:30 a.m. Veteran NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams, as commander and co-pilot, respectively, plan to climb in three hours to await liftoff.
Atlas 5 will take about 12 minutes to lift the Starliner into orbit, starting a 25-hour rendezvous with the space station. Docking is expected on Sunday at 13:50. If all goes well, Wilmore and Williams will land and return to Earth on June 10, landing that morning in a desert location in Arizona or New Mexico depending on the weather.
“I’ve talked to them and they have every confidence in our rocket, they have every confidence in our spacecraft, our operations teams and our management teams,” said astronaut Mike Fincke, training to command a Starliner mission. next year. “They’re definitely ready to go.”
Speaking of being ready to “go,” the Starliner will carry a urine processor pump module that was added at the last minute to replace one that failed on the station earlier this week. To make room for the 150-pound component, some of the crew’s clothing and other personal items were removed from the ship, but generic clothing is stored in the lab and no problems are expected.
“The two specific suitcases that were removed had clothes for Butch and Sonny in them and also some … of their unique toiletries,” Weigel said. “Of course, we have generic shampoos, soaps, etc. on board that they can only use from generic supplies. Same with clothing, and so they will.”
NASA
The long-awaited Starliner flight marks a major milestone in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which funded the development of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner shuttles to provide shuttle transport to and from the space station without need to rely on Russia for onboard travel. the Soyuz spacecraft.
From the beginning, NASA wanted spacecraft from different vendors to ensure uninterrupted access to the space station even if problems stopped a shuttle for an extended period.
SpaceX began flying astronauts aboard Crew Dragon spacecraft in 2020 and has now carried 50 astronauts, cosmonauts and civilians into orbit on 13 flights. Boeing’s Starliner, by contrast, has suffered a steady stream of problems that have delayed its first manned flight by four years, costing the company more than $1 billion to fix.
Wilmore and Williams were finally cleared for departure on May 6. They were in the process of docking for liftoff when ULA engineers reported problems with an auxiliary valve used to maintain proper pressure in an oxygen tank inside the Centaur rocket’s upper stage. Not satisfied with valve performance, mission managers ordered a cleanup.
Atlas 5 was towed back to ULA’s Vertical Integration Facility, where a replacement valve was installed, tested and cleared for flight. Meanwhile, Boeing engineers were evaluating data collected after the cleanup that showed a small leak of helium in the hydraulics used to pressurize the Starliner’s propulsion system.
The leak was eventually traced to hydraulics leading to an aircraft-specific feedback control system, one of 28 such thrusters mounted around the Starliner’s drum-shaped service module. After extensive testing and analysis, mission managers concluded that the spacecraft could safely fly as is without any credible threat to flight safety.
If the leak worsened drastically during flight, the helium manifold in question would be isolated, disabling its thrusters. This would prevent a normal re-entry using more powerful thrusters at the end of the mission, but backup plans are in place to perform a de-orbit “burn” using two long bursts of intact RCS jets.
