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We have heard this earlier than, however Boeing seems to be a few months from lastly launching astronauts into orbit aboard the business CST-100 Starliner crew capsule.
It was about two months previous to this mission’s earlier launch date final July when Boeing and NASA officers determined to place a maintain on launch preparations. Throughout their remaining critiques to certify Starliner for flight practically a yr in the past, engineers found two technical points that in some way escaped detection for years.
Considered one of these points concerned elements of Starliner’s parachute deployment system that didn’t meet required security specs. The opposite was a revelation that Boeing put in flammable tape wrapped round wiring bundles all through the spacecraft, creating a possible hearth hazard. These had been the most recent in a line of technical issues which have plagued the Starliner program, delaying the brand new spacecraft’s first check flight with astronauts from 2017 till this yr.
During the last yr, engineers have redesigned important parts of the parachute system and eliminated roughly 4,300 ft (1.3 kilometers) of the flammable tape—often known as P213—from the Starliner spacecraft.
“We’ve labored via a lot of points that delayed the launch from final summer season and closed these out,” stated Steve Stich, supervisor of NASA’s business crew program. “We had a profitable parachute check in early January, with some modifications to the parachute system to enhance the energy of these parachutes. That went properly. We reviewed that knowledge.”
This was the ultimate check of Starliner’s parachute system earlier than the spacecraft lastly takes off with astronauts onboard, based on Stich. This upcoming flight, referred to as the Crew Flight Check, is presently focused for liftoff from Cape Canaveral House Power Station in Florida no sooner than April 22, he stated in response to questions from Ars.
Assuming liftoff occurs on April 22, the launch time could be roughly 4:24 am EST (09:24 UTC), based mostly on the alignment of the Worldwide House Station’s orbit with the launch pad in Florida. Veteran NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will fly Starliner to a docking with the house station, then return to Earth for an airbag-cushioned parachute-assisted touchdown in New Mexico. The whole check flight will final roughly 10 days.
Rolling again the tape
“We would have liked one check with the brand new upgraded system,” Stich stated of the spacecraft’s parachutes. “We modified the joints on the suspension traces, strengthened the primary canopies, after which additionally there have been some gentle hyperlinks that wanted to be strengthened, which we flew on two parachutes on that check and people all appeared good. We inspected all of the {hardware} after that parachute check in Yuma (in Arizona), and that {hardware} all appeared nice.”
There are 24 of those cloth gentle hyperlinks on every Starliner spacecraft, with eight on every of the capsule’s three primary parachutes. The gentle hyperlinks are a part of the community of traces connecting every parachute cover to the spacecraft. Throughout their remaining security critiques final yr, engineers found the gentle hyperlink connections had been extra liable to failure than anticipated, particularly in a scenario the place one of many spacecraft’s three primary chutes did not deploy. One of many Starliner program’s basic security necessities is that the spacecraft can safely land with two of its three chutes.
For the ultimate prelaunch parachute check on January 9, Boeing verified the energy of the gentle hyperlinks utilizing a check automobile with the identical weight as a Starliner spacecraft. Throughout this check, the check automobile dropped from a C-130 cargo aircraft over a US Military facility in Arizona. Engineers purposely used solely two chutes to simulate the extra stress the system would see throughout an excessive case.
Whereas Boeing ready for the parachute drop check, technicians contained in the Starliner manufacturing unit at NASA’s Kennedy House Heart eliminated a lot of the flammable P213 tape from the spacecraft assigned to the upcoming astronaut flight. This took a number of months. There have been some areas the place the tape could not be eliminated, based on NASA, and in these locations, staff overlapped the P213 materials with one other non-flammable chafe-resistant tape and put in hearth breaks on wire harnesses, based on NASA.
You possibly can take a look at the late discovery of the flammable tape and parachute questions of safety in a few methods. It demonstrates the rigor of NASA’s certification processes for human spaceflight, however any house program supervisor will inform you it is inexpensive and fewer time-consuming to find these issues at an earlier stage of growth, not at some extent when fixing these issues requires disassembling main elements of the spacecraft.
