Boeing will attempt to fly its spacecraft to the NASA space station again on Friday, after failing on its first attempt

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft will attempt to redeem itself on Friday after botching its last major test flight.

The company’s end goal is to transport astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA, as SpaceX already does. The two companies developed their launch systems under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, a competition that provided funding to private companies to develop new spacecraft ready for astronauts.

But before transporting people, the Starliner must complete an unmanned test flight to and from the ISS as part of the NASA certification process. Boeing first attempted this flight in December 2019, but it turned out that one of the spacecraft’s clocks had been set 11 hours earlier than expected. This prompted the spacecraft to fire its engines too vigorously, too soon – a decision supposed to come at a later stage of the mission. This caused the spacecraft to burn 25% of its fuel, forcing Boeing not to dock with the space station in order to save the Starliner from blackout.

Now the company is confident that they’ve fixed the issues with their spaceship, so it’s time to do it again.

“Now is the right time. This team is ready to go, this vehicle is ready to go,” said Kathy Lueders, associate administrator of the manned spaceflight branch at NASA on Thursday.

Boeing must show NASA that its spacecraft can reach the space station

Starliner is scheduled to take off on top of an Atlas V rocket at 2:53 p.m. ET on Friday – assuming thunderstorms don’t impose a delay. The mission, called Orbital Flight Test 2, or OFT-2, will send the rocket and capsule roaring into the sky above NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The story continues

If all goes as planned, the Atlas V booster should drop after about four minutes. This would leave the top stage of the rocket to give Starliner one last push into Earth orbit before it also separated from the capsule. Starliner is expected to orbit Earth alone overnight, slowly aligning to meet the ISS the next day.

“This is the part of this flight that, for me, is so critical: docking at the station and then also, at the back as well, going through this whole un-docking sequence,” said Steve Stich, who manages NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, in a briefing Tuesday.

If the spacecraft successfully locks into a port on the ISS, then the station’s astronauts will open its hatch and unload its cargo – science equipment and supplies. After that, the Starliner is expected to remain docked with the ISS to test its systems and endurance in space, until it returns to Earth on August 5.

Boeing’s investigation into flight failure revealed other issues

During Boeing’s test flight in 2019, the first engine fire prompted the company’s engineers to quickly review the spacecraft’s software while Starliner orbiting Earth. In doing so, they discovered and fixed another problem – not the clock error – which could have been catastrophic.

As Starliner prepares to fall back to Earth, he’s supposed to get rid of his service module – a cylinder containing the spacecraft’s main engines. This part is supposed to fall from the crew module, which contains the astronauts.

But this second software error could have bounced the service module and crashed into the crew module. This could have caused the astronauts capsule to fall or significantly damaged its protective heat shield, making it dangerous to plow in the atmosphere.

The discovery of this problem prompted NASA to investigate Boeing’s coding and overall safety culture. NASA administrators at the time said the software glitch was likely a symptom of bigger issues in the business. But now, said Stich, “Boeing has a great safety culture.”

As a result of NASA’s investigations, Boeing fixed both issues and changed some of the spacecraft’s communication software.

“There’s still a bit of that apprehension in you,” Stich said. “It’s a space flight. The Atlas is a great vehicle. Starliner is a great vehicle. But we know how difficult it is, and it’s also a test flight. what we learned from this test flight. “

Why NASA needs Boeing

Assuming Starliner can make it to the ISS and return without major issues, his next step will be to do it again with astronauts on board – a crewed test flight. If all goes well, that flight could be launched by the end of this year, Stich said.

NASA is counting on both Boeing and SpaceX to replace the government-developed space shuttle, which stopped flying in 2011.

After the space shuttles retired, NASA relied solely on Russian Soyuz rockets to transport its astronauts to and from the ISS. Then SpaceX’s Crew Dragon passed the agency’s tests, flying its first astronauts to the ISS last year. SpaceX has flown two full crews since then. NASA hopes to add Starliner to its fleet soon so that the agency is no longer dependent on a single launch system.

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