Last Updated on 07/09/2024 by Arun jain
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has landed in New Mexico, wrapping up a three-month test mission that ran into technical problems and forced the temporary abandonment of two astronauts. Trapped in space.
The spacecraft touched down at White Sands Space Harbor in the New Mexico desert at 04:01 GMT on Saturday. The two crew members who flew into space – Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams – remained aboard the International Space Station (ISS) due to craft safety concerns.
They are expected to return to Earth next February.
Starliner’s six-hour trip to Earth went off without a hitch, NASA’s live stream showed, completing the critical final leg of its mission despite earlier problems with its thrusters.
The spacecraft re-entered Earth’s atmosphere at around 11 a.m. (03:00 GMT Saturday) on Friday. About 45 minutes later, it deployed a series of parachutes to slow its descent and inflated a set of airbags before touching down at the New Mexico spaceport at 12:01am (04:01 GMT).
‘frustrating’
The mission was intended to be the final test flight before the US space agency NASA certifies the Starliner for regular missions. However, despite a clean return by Boeing, the agency’s decision to keep astronauts off the capsule due to safety concerns has thrown the craft’s certification path into uncertainty.
Wilmore and Williams, whose mission was initially planned to last just eight days, will return to Earth in February 2025 on a vehicle from Boeing’s rival SpaceX.
“When you expect to be there for eight days and suddenly your mission turns into eight months, it has to be kind of disappointing,” Tanya Harrison, a fellow at the University of British Columbia’s Outer Space Institute, told Al Jazeera.
“At the same time this is a highly trained crew that knows stuff like this can happen … they’re trained, they’re prepared,” she said.
During the Starliner’s ascent into space in June, with Wilmore and Williams on board, five of the craft’s 28 maneuvering thrusters failed. The same propulsion system also had some leaks of helium, which is used to pressurize the thrusters.
The defect triggered an intensive investigation by Boeing – with help from NASA – which has cost the company $125m.
His reputation has already been tarnished Security concerns affect its passenger jetsBoeing assured that it could be trusted to bring astronauts home. But that assessment is not shared by NASA.
“Boeing had confidence in the model it built that tried to predict thruster degradation for the rest of the flight,” said Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
But “the NASA team, because of the uncertainty in the modeling, could not be comfortable with that,” he added, describing the mood during the meetings as “tense.”
Recurring defect
There are technical flaws Not the first One of them, to plague the Starliner during test trips Failed in 2019. When its redo mission in 2022 was successful, some of its thrusters also malfunctioned.
The aerospace giant’s Starliner troubles have threatened its position in space, a domain it dominated for decades until SpaceX began offering cheap launches for satellites and astronauts and reshaped the way NASA works with private companies.
Boeing will recover the Starliner capsule after its touchdown and continue to investigate why the thrusters failed in space.
Post Boeing’s Starliner returns to Earth – leaving the crew behind appeared first Al Jazeera.