After two trips to the launch pad that didn’t end in space, two NASA astronauts finally headed to orbit Wednesday in a vehicle built by Boeing, the aerospace giant.
The first trip of Starliner, a 15-foot-wide capsule, with astronauts on board comes four years and six days after SpaceX, the other company that NASA has contracted to offer astronaut trips, launched its first mission with astronauts to the International Space Station. . Boeing will now offer that service as well, but a series of costly delays repeatedly prevented astronauts from flying the company’s vehicle earlier. SpaceX, once seen as an upstart, has carried 13 crews to orbit in total.
The long-awaited flight of the Boeing vehicle is the latest step in NASA’s efforts to rely more on the private sector for its human spaceflight program.
“This is another milestone in this extraordinary NASA story,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a press conference after the launch.
When Starliner arrives at the space station on Thursday, it will join a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule already docked there. NASA officials have firmly said they want to have two different American spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts to orbit.
“We always like to have a backup,” Nelson said. “That makes it safer for our astronauts.”
If the vehicle’s mission goes well, it will also be good news for Boeing, whose aviation safety record is under intense scrutiny after a side panel on an Alaska Airlines plane exploded during a flight earlier this year.
Boeing’s space division has also been under pressure, as work on Starliner dragged on for years longer than the company or NASA had expected. Technical problems included inadequate software testing, corroded propellant valves, flammable tape, and a key component in the parachute system that turned out to be weaker than expected.
A few minutes before launch, Butch Wilmore, the mission commander, said, “Let’s put some fire on this rocket. Let’s take it to the heavens.”
Suni Williams, the other crew member acting as pilot, added: “Come on, Calypso, take us to space and back,” in reference to the name he had given the capsule, in honor of the ship used by oceanographer Jacques Cousteau.
At 10:52 a.m. ET, the engines of an Atlas V rocket ignited, lifting the Starliner spacecraft on an arcing trajectory into space. Today’s launch and early parts of orbit flight provided welcome relief and went smoothly.
“I’m smiling, believe me,” said Mark Nappi, the Boeing official in charge of Starliner. “But it’s a bit of controlled emotion, because this mission has many phases. And we just completed the first one.”
One small glitch involved a system that provides cooling during the trip to orbit. The cooling system, known as a sublimator, used a little more water than expected. Once in orbit, the spacecraft switched to a different cooling system, a radiator, and although engineers will investigate what happened, this will not affect the mission.
Mr Wilmore and Ms Williams are scheduled to dock at the station at 12.15pm on Thursday.
Along the way, Wilmore and Williams will take time to test manually flying the spacecraft, something that is not normally necessary except in emergencies. Life support systems will also be completely overhauled.
Astronauts will then spend at least eight days on the space station before returning to Earth. The mission has 87 test targets in total. “There are many types of flight test targets, I’ll call them ergonomic,” Nappi said. “How do the seats fit together? How do the suits work? What do the screens look like?
After the mission, NASA and Boeing will review the flight data to complete certification of Starliner. The spacecraft would then be ready to begin operational flights once a year to transport NASA crews for six-month stays on the space station. Each Starliner capsule (Boeing has two for orbital missions) is designed for 10 missions.
The road to Wednesday’s flight was years in the making.
In 2014, NASA awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX, the rocket company run by Elon Musk, to build replacements for the space shuttles that carried astronauts to and from the space station before they were retired in 2011. NASA had begun to pay Russia to fly its astronauts into orbit on Soyuz rockets.
Congress was skeptical and repeatedly cut the money NASA had requested for the commercial crew program. At the time, SpaceX was booming, but it was not the dominant force it has become today in the rocket launch industry. Boeing’s selection helped assure lawmakers that NASA was making a good investment.
NASA originally said SpaceX’s Starliner and Crew Dragon could be ready by 2017.
Both companies took longer than expected, something that is not uncommon in the aerospace industry.
But in December 2019, Boeing appeared to be on the home stretch. Then a Starliner test without astronauts on board went awry due to software problems and a planned docking was cancelled. NASA called the flight a “high-visibility near miss,” because software glitches could have led to the spacecraft’s destruction if they had not been fixed before reentry.
Boeing and NASA decided to repeat the uncrewed test, but that test was delayed due to corrosion of the propellant valves and Starliner did not launch again until May 2022.
Then more problems arose. The protective tape that was wrapped around the wiring insulation turned out to be flammable, and a key but weak component of the parachute system could have ruptured if Starliner’s three parachutes did not deploy properly.
Those delays cost Boeing $1.4 billion, and while Starliner remained grounded, SpaceX launched nine crewed missions for NASA (one, Crew-8, is currently docked at the station) and four additional commercial missions with non-member passengers. to NASA on board.
This year’s round of launch attempts began on May 6. That flight was sunk by a misbehaving valve on the Atlas V rocket. A small helium leak was then discovered in the Starliner’s propulsion system, leading to several weeks of investigation.
A second launch attempt on Saturday was reduced to 3 minutes and 50 seconds before liftoff, until computers autonomously handling the final parts of the launch sequence encountered a problem and stopped the countdown.
Over the next few days, technicians replaced a faulty power component, setting the stage for Wednesday’s successful launch.
Niraj Chokshi contributed reports.