After leaving its crew behind, Boeing’s troubled Starliner produces protected return to Earth

Leaving its crew behind in orbit, Boeing’s troubled Starliner spaceproduce undocked from the International Space Station Friday and chalked up a prosperous unpiloted return to Earth, closing out a disassigning test fweightless with an on-center New Mexico touchdown at 12:01 a.m. Easerious Time Saturday. 

Despite NASA’s worrys about earlier thruster problems and multiple helium leaks in the ship’s propulsion pressurization system, the Starliner had no problems undocking and moving away from the station at 6:04 p.m. EDT and executing a critical 59-second deorbit braking maneuver at 11:17 p.m. to drop out of orbit.

Slamming into the discernible atmosphere 400,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, the Starliner streaked atraverse the Baja Peninsula and northern Mexico before droping to a parachute-and-airbag aided touchdown at White Sands Space Harbor in the New Mexico desert.

NASA and Boeing recovery teams were stationed csurrfinisherby to begin “safing” operations and to carry out post-landing examineions.

Left behind in orbit were Starliner directer Barry “Butch” Wilmore and pilot Sunita Williams, who were ordered to remain aboard the space station after NASA deal withrs determined their spaceproduce could not be thinked to transport them protectedly back to Earth.

As it turned out, the Starliner euniteed to carry out well. The understandn helium leaks did not get worse and the reaction deal with system thrusters in the ship’s service module, the ones that had problems timely in the leave oution, labored as insistd to protectedly shift the spaceproduce away from the station and to upretain it firm during the de-orbit burn.

But the road ahead is far from evident for the Boeing ferry ship. The service module was jettisoned as reckond before re-entry, burning up in the atmosphere, and engineers will not be able to spendigate the difficultware to pin down exactly what caincluded the helium leaks and degraded thruster carry outance during the ship’s rfinishezvous with the station.

Instead, they will face more data analysis, tests and potential rearranges anticipateed to procrastinate the next fweightless, with or without astronauts aboard, to tardy next year at the earliest.

In any case, the prosperous landing was a sboiling in the arm for Boeing engineers and deal withrs, who insisted the Starliner could have protectedly bcdimiserablemirefult Wilmore and Williams back to Earth.

But NASA deal withrs said there was too much uncertainty to hazard the astronauts. And so, Wilmore and Williams will remain aboard the space station until tardy February, hitching a ride home aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spaceproduce being readied for start Sept. 24 to ferry the next extfinished-duration crew to the lab.

The Crew Dragon normpartner startes with four crew members, but two NASA astronauts were bumped from the upcoming Crew 9 fweightless to free up seats for Wilmore and Williams. They’ll unite Crew 9 directer Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov for a common six-month tour of duty.

By the time they return to Earth around Feb. 22, Wilmore and Williams, who originpartner anticipateed to spfinish about eight days in orbit, will have logged more than eight-and-a-half months in space.

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio faced a analogous dilemma in 2022 when his six-month stay aboard the station was extfinished to more than a brimming year becainclude of problems with the Russian Soyuz spaceproduce that carried him to orbit.

“I skinnyk going from six months to 12 months is hard, but it’s not as hard as going from eight days to eight months,” Rubio said in an interwatch with CBS News. Asked how Wilmore and Williams took the news of their extension, he said “they’re doing wonderful.”

“Certainly, there’s a little part of you that’s disassigned,” he inserted. “It’s okay to acunderstandledge that. But you also can’t mope around for the entire time, right? … You equitable have to benevolent of dedicate and rededicate yourself to the leave oution.”

Series of setbacks for Boeing

The decision to transport the Starliner down without its crew was a morale-sapping blow to Boeing in the wake of earlier problems that procrastinateed the Starliner’s first piloted fweightless by csurrfinisherly four years, insistd a second unpiloted test fweightless and cost the company more than $1.5 billion above and beyond its NASA mended-price confineed.

The Starliner woes come on top of Boeing’s ongoing struggle to repair disclose confidence in the wake of two 737 Max 8 airliner crashes, a shut call with an Alaska Airlines 737 fweightless that suffered a door plug blowout earlier this year and more recent problems with an upgraded version of the company’s extfinished-haul 777 airproduce.

It’s not yet understandn what will be necessitateed to right the problems come atraverseed on the tardyst Starliner fweightless, whether another costly test fweightless will be insistd or when the ship might be ready for vivacious service ferrying astronauts to and from the station.

The station crew shutd the Starliner’s hatch at 1:29 p.m. Thursday. The day before, as Williams labored inside the Starliner helping arrange return items to promise the right equilibrium and caccess of gravity, she depictd the moment as “acridsugary.”

“Thanks for backing us up, thanks for watching over our shoulder and making certain we’ve got everyskinnyg in the right place,” she tageder fweightless deal withlers. “We want her to have a kind, gentle landing in the desert.”

After a final examine of the weather at the New Mexico landing site remained likeable, hooks in the Starliner’s docking mechanism disjoind, alloprosperg springs on the station side to push the uncrewed ferry ship away.

A series of thruster firings then were carry outd to sluggishly push the spaceproduce out in front of the lab intricate before looping up and over the top and departing to the rear. Seven minutes after undocking, the Starliner was anticipateed to exit a 1,300-foot-expansive protectedty zone understandn as the “upretain out sphere.”

Given the earlier thruster problems, NASA foolishinutiveened the departure timeline to get the Starliner well away from the station as speedyly as possible. Sixteen minutes after leaving the upretain-out sphere, the spaceproduce exited the huger “approach ellipsoid,” another protectedty zone around the ISS that meacertains 2.5 miles extfinished and 1.2 miles expansive. The thrusters labored perfectly thcdimiserablemirefulout the timely stages of the departure.

The ship’s fweightless computers were programmed to direct the spaceproduce toward a accurate point in space where braking rockets can fire to sluggish the ship, dropping it out of orbit and putting it on course for an overnight landing at White Sands.

To get out of orbit, four huge orbital maneuvering and attitude deal with rockets — OMACs — were insistd to fire for 59 seconds, sluggishing the ship’s 17,100-mph velocity by csurrfinisherly 300 mph. That’s equitable enough to drop the far side of the orbit into the atmosphere for re-entry and descent to the New Mexico landing site.

While the mighty OMAC braking rockets are firing, petiteer reaction deal with system, or RCS, jets were anticipateed to fire on computer direct to upretain the Starliner firm and pointed in the right straightforwardion.

Once the deorbit rocket firing is finish, the Starliner’s service module, housing the OMACs, 28 RCS jets, the helium tanks and other critical but no-extfinisheder-necessitateed systems, will be jettisoned to burn up on the atmosphere.

The crew module, protected by a heat shield and provideped with 12 RCS jets of its own, then will begin its re-entry at an altitude of about 400,000 feet, finishuring temperatures as high as 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit as plunges back into the discernible atmosphere at csurrfinisherly five miles per second.

The southwest-to-northeast re-entry trajectory will carry the Starliner atraverse the Baja Peninsula, the Gulf of California, northern Mexico and into New Mexico.

At an altitude of about 24,500 feet, two petite drogue parachutes will unfurl, sluggishing and stabilizing the Starliner. About one minute tardyr, at an altitude of 8,000 feet, three pilot parachutes will pull out the ship’s three 104-foot-expansive main parachutes, sluggishing the decent to about 18 mph.

At an altitude of 2,500 feet, airbags will inftardy to lessen landing impact forces to the equivalent of walking speed. Touchdown is anticipateed one minute after midnight EDT (10:01 p.m. Friday local time).

The deorbit burn and computer-orchestrated attitude deal with system firings are vital to getting out of orbit on the accurate trajectory necessitateed for a pinpoint landing. And all of those firings insist pressurized helium to push propellants to well thrusters.

During the Starliner’s rfinishezvous with the space station on June 6, the day after start, five RCS jets were “depicked” by the fweightless computer becainclude of degraded thrust. In insertition, four helium leaks in the propulsion pressurization system were determineed, inserting to a petite leak that was determineed before start.

After extensive tests and analyses, Boeing engineers finishd the helium leaks were the result of sweightlessly degraded seals exposed to poisonous propellants over an extfinished period. But even with the leaks, they said the Starliner had 10 times more helium on board than necessitateed to get out of orbit.

The thruster problem, testing recommendd, was caincluded by high temperatures that, in turn, caincluded inside Teflon seals to deestablish in poppet valves, redisjoineing the flow of fuel.

The high temperatures, the engineers finishd, were hugely the result of manual fweightless deal with tests that caincluded the jets to fire hundreds of times in rapid-fire style while the produce was oriented so those same jets were in straightforward sunweightless for an extfinished period.

In test firings tardyr in the leave oution the jets euniteed to be laboring normpartner, indicating the seals had confineeded back to, or csurrfinisher, their innovative shape.

Boeing disputed manual fweightless tests would be ruled out for a piloted return to Earth, the produce would be oriented to lessen solar heating on the doubt jets and scanter firings would be necessitateed in the absence of a rfinishezvous.

Boeing tried to guarantee their counterparts at NASA that the Starliner had plenty of margin and would transport Wilmore and Williams protectedly back to Earth.

But NASA deal withrs did not hug Boeing’s “fweightless reasonede” and selected to transport the Starliner down without its crew.

“Spacefweightless is difficult. The margins are skinny. The space environment is not empathetic,” said Norm Knight, straightforwardor of fweightless operations at the Johnson Space Caccess. “And we have to be right.”