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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.
This article was originally published on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, technology policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars is owned by WIRED’s parent company, Condé Nast.
NASA’s chief of human spaceflight operations, former astronaut Ken Bowersox, said no final resolution had been made about how Wilmore and Williams would return to Earth. He said there were moderate disagreements between engineers at NASA, which is the spaceflight customer, and Boeing, which evolved and operates Starliner, about the viability of the 28 jet formula boosters used to sensitively maneuver and point the vehicle.
“I think it’s been very healthy,” Bowersox said of the internal discussions on a call with reporters on Wednesday. “I have to admit that, 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 decision will be made soon. Bowersox said NASA wants to decide the astronauts’ return path until mid-August.
NASA’s fears about the Starliner’s boosters boil 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 thrusters provided by Aerojet Rocketdyne during the flight. Four of the five engines 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.
In floor tests, engineers were able to demonstrate similar failures. Subsequent inspections showed a bulge in a Teflon seal in an oxidizing valve known as a “flapper,” which can limit the flow of nitrogen tetroxide propellant. The propellants consume nitrogen tetroxide and combine it. with hydrazine as fuel for combustion. However, despite the tests, engineers still don’t understand exactly why the swelling occurs and whether it will manifest during the Starliner’s return flight to Earth.
“People need to perceive what’s going on with the physics of Teflon, what makes it warm and what causes it to contract,” said Steve Stich, who directs NASA’s commercial crew program. “That’s what the team is looking to perceive. I think the NASA network in general would like to perceive a little bit more about the root cause. “
Boeing engineers advocate flying the Starliner as is, because enough is known about the challenge that no failure will occur when the vehicle returns to Earth. However, at meetings of key NASA engineers known as the Program Control Board this week, no agreement was reached on whether this so-called flight justified enough to bring the team to the edge of the vehicle.
“A lot of other people have expressed their thoughts to us,” Bowersox said. “We heard enough voices indicating that the resolution is not transparent within the Program Control Board. “
Since NASA will soon make a decision on whether to bring a team aboard the Starliner, the Boeing team has about a week to convince the NASA team of the Starliner’s protection before a possible transfer to Crew Dragon.
Stich also explained why it would take a few weeks to reconfigure Starliner’s onboard firmware package to allow for the undocking of the unmanned spacecraft. This is one of the reasons why the launch of the Crew-9 project was delayed from August 18 to the end of September.
Although unmanned undocking capability exists in Starliner flight software, it is currently configured for team operations. That is, the process of undocking and moving away from the space station, the flight software performs certain movements and the equipment performs certain movements. The configuration update for integrated operations between the software and the group was made after Starliner’s last autonomous flight in 2022 that flew to the space station and back.
“Essentially, what we are asking the team to do is go back two years and resurrect the software configuration needed to give automatic responses to flares near the ISS if there is a challenge near the ISS, which the software now allows. manually,” Stich said. “The team is doing a lot of updating that knowledge of the project as other things change. ”
No painting has been done on the standalone package since the 2022 flight. Ars said it would take about 4 weeks to complete this configuration change, and Stich demonstrated it.
“Before running that, it is simply wise and guilty to take the project software and knowledge in that configuration, move to the built-in verification facility where all the flight software resides, and “run a few verification instances just to make sure we’re safe. that we haven’t missed anything,” Stich said. “That’s what would take time if we were to move to unmanned undocking. “
This story was originally published on Ars Technica.
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