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May 20, 2022 • 20 minutes ago • 2 minutes of reading • Join the conversation
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CAPE CANAVER – The new capsule of the Boeing Starliner crew approached an orbit in meeting with the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, a day after the successful launch of a long-awaited test flight without astronauts on board.
The droplet-shaped CST-100 Starliner was scheduled to arrive at the space station at about 7:10 p.m. EDT (11:10 p.m. GMT) to dock with the orbital research post 24 hours after takeoff from U.S. Space Force base Cape Canaveral in Florida.
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The capsule was launched into orbit on an Atlas V rocket provided by the Boeing-Lockheed Martin United Launch Alliance (ULA). The Starliner reached its intended pre-orbit 31 minutes later despite damage to two onboard propulsion devices.
After Boeing engineers met with NASA officials on Friday to highlight Starliner’s approach to the station, the company said the two faulty pushers posed no risk to the rest of the space flight.
Boeing added that it was observing some unexpected behavior detected with Starliner’s thermal control system, but the capsule’s temperatures remained stable.
“It’s all part of the process of training Starliner to orbit,” said Boeing mission commentator Steve Ciseloff during a live NASA online broadcast.
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Much depends on the success of the mission, since the ill-fated first test flight at the end of 2019 almost ended with the loss of the vehicle after a software problem that effectively thwarted the spacecraft’s ability to reach the space station.
Subsequent problems with the Starliner propulsion system supplied by Aerojet Rocketdyne prompted Boeing to delete a second attempt to launch the capsule last summer.
Starliner remained in custody for another nine months while the two companies debated what caused the fuel valves to close and which company was responsible for repairing them, Reuters reported last week.
Boeing said it had finally resolved the issue with a temporary solution and planned a redesign after the flight this week.
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Success is seen as key to Boeing as the Chicago-based company struggles to emerge from successive crises in its jet business and space defense business. The Starliner program alone cost nearly $ 600 million in engineering failures since the 2019 crash.
If all goes well with the current mission, Starliner can fly its first team of astronauts to the space station in the fall.
So far, the only passenger was a research mannequin, bizarrely named Rosie Rocket and dressed in a blue flight suit to gather data on the crew’s cabin during the voyage, plus 800 pounds (227 kg) of cargo to deliver to the space station.
The research platform is currently home to a seven-member crew – three NASA astronauts, an astronaut from the European Space Agency in Italy and three Russian astronauts.
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A successful mission will move the long-delayed Starliner one step closer to providing NASA with a second reliable means of transporting astronauts to and from the space station.
After resuming crew flights into orbit from the United States in 2020, nine years after the end of the space shuttle program, the U.S. space agency had to rely solely on Elon Musk’s Falcon 9 rockets and Crew Dragon capsules to NASA astronauts are flying.
Previously, the only other way to reach the orbital laboratory was by boarding the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. (Report by Joey Roulette; edited by Steve Gorman and Sandra Mahler)
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