Posts Tagged: crewed
Boeing Starliner’s first crewed ISS flight delayed due to technical issues
Boeing’s Starliner was supposed to fly its first crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on July 21st, but a couple of technical issues has kept the company from pushing through with its plan. Together with NASA, the aerospace corporation has announced that it’s delaying the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft’s Crew Flight Test date yet again to address the risks presented by two new problems Boeing engineers have detected.
The first issue lies with the spacecraft’s parachute system. Boeing designed the Starliner capsule to float back down to Earth with the help of three parachutes. According to The New York Times, the company discovered that parts of the lines connecting the system to the capsule don’t have the ability to tolerate the spacecraft’s load in case only two of the three parachutes are deployed correctly. Since the capsule will be carrying human passengers back to our planet, the company has to look at every aspect of its spacecraft to ensure their safety as much as possible. Boeing expects to do another parachute testing before it schedules another launch attempt.
In addition to its parachute problem, Boeing is also reassessing the use of a certain tape adhesive to wrap hundreds of feet of wiring. Apparently, the tape could be flammable, so engineers are looking to use another kind of wrapping for areas of the spacecraft with the greatest fire risk.
The Crew Flight Test is the last hurdle the company has to overcome to regularly start ferrying astronauts to the ISS. NASA chose Boeing as one of its commercial crew partners along with SpaceX, but it has fallen behind its peer over the years. The Starliner has completed uncrewed flights in the past as part of the tests it has to go through for crewed missions. But SpaceX already has 10 crewed flights under its belt, with the first one taking place way back in 2020. In addition to taking astronauts to the ISS and bringing human spaceflight back to American soil since the last space shuttle launch in 2011, SpaceX has also flown civilians to space.
That said, NASA and Boeing remain optimistic about Starliner’s future. In a statement, NASA Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich said:
“Crew safety remains the highest priority for NASA and its industry providers, and emerging issues are not uncommon in human spaceflight especially during development. If you look back two months ago at the work we had ahead of us, it’s almost all complete. The combined team is resilient and resolute in their goal of flying crew on Starliner as soon as it is safe to do so. If a schedule adjustment needs to be made in the future, then we will certainly do that as we have done before. We will only fly when we are ready.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/boeing-starliners-first-crewed-iss-flight-delayed-due-to-technical-issues-114023064.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
NASA pushes back crewed moon landing to 2025
NASA has officially adjusted its timeline for the Artemis III mission and won't be landing on the Moon in 2024. The agency is now aiming to land the first woman and next American man on the lunar surface in 2025 at the earliest, NASA administrator Bill Nelson has announced. NASA was originally targeting a 2028 launch date for its return to the Moon, but the Trump administration moved that date up by four years back in 2017. In a conference call with reporters, Nelson said "the Trump administration's target of 2024 human landing was not grounded in technical feasibility."
In addition to the unrealistic deadline, Nelson blamed Blue Origin's lawsuit against the agency for the delay. It had to put its contract with SpaceX on hold and pause work on the lunar lander that's meant to take astronauts to the surface of the Moon for a couple of times. NASA lost almost seven months of work on the lander as a result, which had cast doubts on the 2024 landing even before Nelson made his announcement.
If you'll recall, NASA awarded SpaceX a $ 2.9 billion contract to develop a Starship-based lunar landing system back in April. The agency historically works with more than one contractor for each mission, but in this instance, it inked a deal with Elon Musk's company alone. Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin sued NASA over that decision, arguing that it wasn't given the chance to revise its bid for the project.
Based on legal documents The Verge obtained in September, however, NASA felt that Blue Origin "gambled" with its proposed $ 5.9 billion lunar lander bid. The company allegedly set the price higher than necessary, because it assumed that NASA would award it a contract but negotiate for a lower price. The Federal Court of Claims ultimately ruled against Blue Origin a few days ago, dismissing its claims that NASA ignored "key flight safety requirements" when it awarded SpaceX the lunar lander contract.
Nelson's announcement comes shortly after NASA moved the uncrewed Artemis I flight test launch from this year to February 2022. That's assuming everything will go as planned — the Orion capsule and Space Launch System that will be used for the mission will still have to go through a battery of tests before NASA can schedule it for blastoff.
Two more astronauts join SpaceX’s first crewed mission to the ISS
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