boeing starliner spacecraft is officially on its way to the international space station
after 2.5 years of delays a united launch alliance atlas 5 rocket launched from cape canaveral space
force station in florida on thursday may 19 at 6 54 pm eastern daylight time carrying starliner
aloft on an uncrib mission called orbital flight test 2. if all goes according to plan starliner
will dock with the iss on friday evening may 20th and spend 4 to five days attached to the
orbiting lab before coming back to earth for a parachute aided landing in the western us
success on all of those fronts would likely show that the boeing spacecraft is ready to
carry nasa astronauts to and from the station starliner got itself into the
proper orbit after separating from the atlas 5 on thursday a huge milestone for boeing and nasa
after all the capsule was unable to rendezvous with the iss during the original oft in december
2019 after suffering some software glitches shortly after launch and it failed to get off the
ground when oft 2 first rolled out to the pad last summer pre-launch checks revealed malfunctioning
valves in starliner's propulsion system a problem that took about eight months to address
oft two's liftoff was a big milestone for ula as well marking the 150th launch for
the rocket company which is a joint effort of lockheed martin in boeing
at a post-launch press conference on thursday night nasa and boeing experts were quick to
congratulate their various teams for the hard work that led to the successful launch
today was just a huge day for commercial crew said steve stick manager of nasa's commercial
crew program as he listed the hurdles and launch milestones of the day's events
he also mentioned one small starliner malfunction during the spacecraft's orbital insertion burn
which occurred 31 minutes after liftoff two of starliner's thrusters didn't fire as expected
the first failed after only one second its backup immediately kicked on and was able to
fire for another 25 seconds before it also failed redundancy failsafe activated a tertiary backup
for the thruster group and starliner was able to complete the crucial burn without incident
the boeing spacecraft is outfitted with four of these thruster groups on its aft section
referred to an industry nomenclature as dog houses which each contain three orbital maneuverings and
attitude control omac thrusters used to perform significant maneuver burns like those that achieve
orbital insertion the two omac thrusters that malfunctioned and the third that
stepped in to compensate were all in the same dog house on starliner's aft section
boeing representative said the system is designed to be redundant and it performed like it was
supposed to now the team is working the why as to why we had those anomalies occur said mark nappy
vice president and program manager for boeing's commercial crew program nappy emphasized that the
issue was not one that needed to be resolved prior to the completion of the oft 2 mission during
the briefing stick pointed out that starliner had performed a second significant burn with
the same omac thrusters putting it on course to rendezvous with the international space station
that second burn that we performed did use that third thruster in that doghouse and it
performed fine for that entire burn so it doesn't look like something that's common to all three
and as mark nappy said they started firing right the first one fired and the second one picked up
fired for 25 seconds stitch set so we'll just have to go through a little bit more
troubleshooting and see if we can figure out why those two thrusters didn't complete that
orbit insertion burns he added starliner will catch up to the space station on friday evening
may twentieth once within about two miles of the orbiting lab the spacecraft will demonstrate
stop and retreat maneuvers before moving into dock at around 7 10 p.m eastern daylight time
nasa is continuing to investigate water that leaked into a spacesuit helmet during a spacewalk
earlier this year and is holding off on future spacewalks until engineers can resolve the problem
the leak took place during the most recent spacewalk from the u.s segment of the station on
march 23rd involving nasa astronaut raja shari and european space agency astronaut matthias maurer
at the end of the nearly seven hour spacewalk mauer reported that water had pulled on his visor
although the thin layer of water about 20 to 25 centimeters across did not pose an immediate
threat to him nasa had provided few updates about the water leak since the incident however at a may
12 meeting of nasa's aerospace safety advisory panel asap susan helms a former nasa astronaut
who serves on a panel said that the agency is no go for spacewalks or evas currently because of
the ongoing investigation because nasa is thinking through the risk posture for these suits which are
aging the emu is currently no go for planned evas pending an investigation into what they discover
she said an emu or extravehicular mobility unit is the spacesuit used by nasa for iss spacewalks
at a may 17th briefing about the upcoming boeing cst 100 on crit flight test dana weigel nasa iss
deputy program manager confirmed nasa is holding off on routine spacewalks for the time being the
investigation had found no signs of contamination in water in the suit that could be linked to the
helmet leak the suit itself she said can't be inspected in detail until it's returned to earth
nasa is planning to bring the suit back on the next spacex cargo dragon mission launching to
the station in early june from an eva standpoint until we understand better what the causal factors
might have been during the last eva with our emu we are no go for nominal evas she said we won't do
a planned eva until we've had a chance to really address and rule out major system failure modes
that will be done through a review process she compared to a flight readiness
review weigel said nasa will consider contingency spacewalks by balancing the risk of conducting
the spacewalk against the risk posed by the station component that requires a spacewalk
to repair or replace we'll have to look at risk versus risk she said which will
include the status of the investigation and any measures to resolve the problem
the crew for mission did deliver several pads designed to be placed inside the
helmet to absorb water she said 16 more pads will be delivered on the starliner mission
that no-go assessment for routine spacewalks has a little practical effect on iss operations
as no spacewalks were planned until later this year to install a second set of new solar arrays
weigel didn't estimate how long the investigation will take the incident in march was nowhere near
as serious as one in 2013 when water leaked into the helmet of another esa astronaut luca parmitano
shortly after his spacewalk started he was able to return to the airlock safely but only after
about one and a half liters of water leaked into the helmet making it difficult for him to breathe
water leaks have been an intermittent issue for the suits for years there are still continuing
issues with evidence of water in the spacesuit helmets after the conclusion of an eva or even
in some cases during an eva helm said at the asap meeting with no clear root cause for the problem
besides the addition of the pads she said engineers are studying the general level of
helmet moisture normal for the suit and that wraps up today's episode we did also like to
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