The first guest on Boeing’s Starliner Starliner will be Rosie the Rocketeer, a mannequin for testing. The mannequin will fly to the International Space Station as a capsule on Thursday night, local time. If she completes the trip safely, NASA astronauts will be cleared for future flights on the spacecraft. Leifeng Network
If the test is successful, Boeing will become the second private company approved to transport NASA crews to the International Space Station and will become Starliner’s official competitor to SpaceX’s Dragon capsule. “We’re so excited to fly. The Starliner is a great vehicle. Really, the only way to get the ultimate data a pilot needs is to fly in the environment and dock at the ISS,” NASA Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stitch told a news conference earlier this month.
Boeing’s Starliner is scheduled to launch on an Atlas V rocket at 6:54 p.m. local time from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
In addition to “passenger” Rosie, it will carry more than 400 pounds of food, clothing and sleeping bags. So far, the weather is looking good, with forecasters estimating a 70 percent chance that weather conditions will allow the launch. (If delayed until Friday, the chances drop to 40 percent.) If all goes according to plan Thursday, the capsule will rendezvous with the space station around 7:10 p.m. ET Friday.
When the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011, NASA astronauts lost their regular plan to travel to the International Space Station. Instead, they launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
And NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is working with private commercial partners to develop a new generation of spacecraft for transporting astronauts and cargo. In May 2020, two NASA space shuttle veterans became the first people to travel aboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule to the International Space Station and return safely to Earth two months later. Since then, SpaceX has regularly transported astronauts to the space station. Northrop Grumman and Sierra Space also have contracts with NASA for unmanned cargo resupply missions. Earlier this year, Axiom became the first company to send an all-private group of space tourists to the International Space Station.
Boeing’s new launch, called Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2), isn’t its first attempt at an unmanned demonstration of the Starliner. The uncrewed OFT-1 mission in December 2019 has already failed once, when a software glitch caused the capsule to burn propellant after launch. The spacecraft entered orbit about 155 miles above the ground, but did not reach the International Space Station, which orbits higher. Boeing fixed the problem at the time and planned to try again last August, but during pre-launch preparations, engineers discovered a problem with the oxidizer valve in the Starliner’s propulsion system. The launch was canceled. After Starliner’s successful launch readiness review on Tuesday, Mark Nappi, program manager for Boeing’s commercial crew program, said those issues have now been resolved and everything is in place.
If all goes well with this week’s test mission, Boeing’s first crewed spaceflight will take place later this year and is scheduled to carry two or three NASA astronauts, “We want to make sure this is the vehicle we can fly next time. ,” Kathryn Luders, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, said at the agency’s media briefing on Wednesday. “We need to make sure this spacecraft doesn’t need to update or fix anything.”
This will include checking that the fake astronaut Rosie is not damaged, and conducting other tests to ensure a real person can board the spacecraft. “Rosie isn’t breathing, but we want the spacecraft to return so we can start testing the environmental control systems,” NASA astronaut Suni Williams said Wednesday at the same event.
NASA will make a decision on launch dates and crew additions this summer, Lueders said.
Since Rosie won’t be doing any driving, for this demo tour, Starliner will use an artificial vision and navigation system called the Vision-Based Electro-optical Sensor Tracking Assemblies (VESTA), whose sensors detect when the spacecraft is connected to the International Space Station. Automatically guide the spacecraft. If the docking fails for any reason, the crew on the ISS can send the spacecraft an evacuation or abort command.
From NASA’s perspective, contracts with Boeing and SpaceX have advantages, including reducing reliance on cooperation from Roscosmos, one of the operators of the International Space Station and provider of Soyuz flights. “Layoffs are a priority, especially given the uncertainty in Russia. The more options we have into space, the better, with or without crew. Competition may also ultimately lead to cost savings and innovation,” Harvard Business School studies commercialization of the aerospace sector said economist Matthew Winzier.
SpaceX’s reusable capsules and rockets save NASA money, which, combined with Boeing’s commercial crew program, could save the agency billions of dollars. That’s because NASA’s ambitious plans to go from low-Earth orbit to interstellar space have cost more than its overall budget, so the agency has opted to outsource transportation while focusing more on the space exploration side. But working with private companies can be challenging. For example, a 2018 audit of NASA’s Space Launch System, the giant rocket that will send the Artemis mission to the moon, found Boeing to be partly responsible for its high costs and delays. SpaceX has faced public criticism over environmental issues, such as plans to expand its Boca Chica launch facility and interference with the night sky by its Starlink satellite constellation.
The two companies in NASA’s commercial crew program make up an interesting pair: old-school Boeing and young SpaceX. “Despite all the criticism Boeing has received for being one of these large, sometimes not-quite-moving contractors, from the very beginning of these commercial projects, it has struggled to be agile against the competition. As the industry continues to mature, you You’ll see an evolution of scrappy startups and large traditional players,” Weinzierl said.
Similar adjustments have been made by Lockheed Martin, which is not a project member, Weinzierl believes, by working with other companies to tout the commercial space station concept that NASA is investing in for the post-ISS era. (United Launch Alliance, the rocket maker behind the Starliner capsule, is a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed.) Boeing’s future plans with Starliner include launches on ULA’s newer, cheaper, and more powerful Vulcan Centaur rocket it. Retired Atlas V.
But those plans depend on whether Starliner can successfully conduct a demonstration flight. “We’re really looking forward to the spacecraft coming home,” Williams said. “We still have a lot of work to do before we get to a manned flight, but we can’t wait.”
This article is reproduced from: https://www.leiphone.com/category/zaobao/6CdtR2v4G1OxweTq.html
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.