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At a news conference Wednesday, NASA officials publicly discussed for the first time divisions within the company over whether the Starliner spacecraft is reliable enough to bring two veteran astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, back to Earth from the International Space Station.
The local firm also showed off key elements reported exclusively through Ars over the past week, adding that NASA has been quietly working for weeks with SpaceX on a conceivable Wilmore and Williams rescue project, and that the launch of the Crew- 9 has been postponed until September 24 to take into account this possibility, and that Starliner cannot autonomously undock with the vehicle’s existing software configuration.
NASA’s chief of human spaceflight operations, former astronaut Ken Bowersox, said no final resolution has been made about how Wilmore and Williams will return to Earth. He said there were moderate disagreements between engineers at NASA, which is the spaceflight customer, and Boeing. that evolved and operates Starliner, on the viability of the 28 reaction formula thrusters used for sensitive maneuvering and pointing of the vehicle.
“I think it’s been very healthy,” Bowersox said of the internal discussions in a call with reporters Wednesday. “I have to admit, infrequently when we have disagreements, it’s not fun. It can be painful to have those discussions, but that’s what makes us a smart organization. “
NASA has been looking at various contingencies, but officials appear to have opted for two other features to bring the two astronauts back to Earth. They may return to Starliner if NASA engineers became more comfortable with uncertainty about booster performance, and if so, they would do so in the second part of this month or the first part of September. Alternatively, NASA could launch the Crew-9 project with a supplement of two astronauts instead of four, and Wilmore and Williams would sign up for it. that “increment” on the space station and will return to Earth in February 2025.
When asked if he thought one of the two scenarios was more likely than the other, Bowersox said he couldn’t say. However, a final resolution will be made soon. Bowersox said NASA wants to decide the astronauts’ return path by mid-August.
NASA’s fear about the Starliner’s thrusters boils down to the failure of five of them during the vehicle’s ascent to the space station. The Starliner’s flight computer shut down five boosters provided by Aerojet Rocketdyne during the flight. Four of the five thrusters recovered after overheating.
Since then, Boeing and NASA have conducted surface and space tests of the small boosters to try to reproduce the failure and better understand, essentially, what is happening. By addressing the root cause, engineers will have confidence in their ability to solve the challenge of Starliner’s return flight to Earth.
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