EDT), wrapping up the six-day flight, which tested the end-to-end capabilities of the crew-capable spacecraft. NASA and Boeing successfully landed the company’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft Wednesday, May 25, 2022, in the desert of the western United States, completing the uncrewed Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) to the International Space Station (ISS) to help establish that the system is ready to fly astronauts.Ībout four hours after departing the orbital outpost, Starliner touched down onto its airbags at 4:49 p.m. OFT-2 serves as an end-to-end test of the system’s capabilities. Boeing’s Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) is Starliner’s second uncrewed flight test to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. EDT (2310 GMT).Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft safely lands at White Sands Missile Range’s Space Harbor on Wednesday, May 25, 2022, in New Mexico. Once within about 2 miles (3 kilometers) of the orbiting lab, the spacecraft will demonstrate stop-and-retreat maneuvers before moving in to dock at around 7:10 p.m. Starliner will catch up to the space station on Friday evening (May 20). "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 burn," he added. The first one fired, and the second one picked up, fired for 25 seconds," Stitch said. And, as Mark said, they started firing right. So, it doesn't look like something that's common to all three. "That second burn that we performed … did use that third thruster in that doghouse, and it performed fine for that entire burn. During the briefing, Stich 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. Nappi emphasized that the issue was not one that needed to be resolved prior to the completion of the OFT-2 mission. Now the team is working the 'why' as to why we had those anomalies occur," said Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager for Boeing’s commercial crew program. "The system is designed to be redundant, and it performed like it was supposed to. NASA reassigns 2 astronauts from Boeing's Starliner to SpaceX's Crew Dragon Boeing to launch 2nd test flight of Starliner spacecraft for NASA on May 19 Boeing's 1st Starliner flight test in photos The two OMAC thrusters that malfunctioned, and the third that stepped in to compensate, were all in the same doghouse on Starliner’s aft section, Boeing representatives said. The Boeing spacecraft is outfitted with four of these thruster groups on its aft section, referred to in industry nomenclature as "doghouses," which each contain three orbital maneuvering and attitude control (OMAC) thrusters used to perform significant maneuver burns like those that achieve orbital insertion. Redundancy failsafes activated a tertiary backup for the thruster group, and Starliner was able to complete the crucial burn without incident. Its backup immediately kicked on and was able to fire for another 25 seconds before it also failed. As he listed the hurdles and launch milestones of the day’s events, he also mentioned one small Starliner malfunction.ĭuring the spacecraft’s orbital insertion burn, which occurred 31 minutes after liftoff, two of Starliner’s thrusters didn’t fire as expected. "Today was just a huge day for commercial crew," said Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. OFT-2'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 and Boeing.Īt 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.
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