Tag: Space

NASA reveals date for attempted return flight of Starliner

Posted on by faz_business



NASA is targeting Friday, September 6, for the return flight of Boeing Space’s troubled Starliner spacecraft, the agency revealed on Thursday.

The vehicle will come home from the International Space Station (ISS) nearly three months later than originally planned and without the crew that it arrived with. The flight, the outcome of which could determine the Starliner’s future, is expected to take about six hours, NASA said in a blog post on Thursday.

“After undocking [at 6:04 p.m. ET], the Starliner will take about six hours to reach the landing zone at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico,” NASA said in the post. “The spacecraft will touch down about 12:03 a.m. on Saturday, September 7, descending under parachutes and with inflated airbags to cushion the impact.”

The Starliner has been docked at the ISS since early June after completing its first-ever crewed flight, with NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore taking the ride.

But as it approached the ISS on June 6, issues emerged with some of the spacecraft’s thrusters. Several helium leaks were also detected.

The thrusters are key in guiding the Starliner toward its reentry point into Earth’s atmosphere for the trip home, and so NASA paused the return voyage to give it time to learn more about the issue and to confirm if it was safe to put Williams and Wilmore inside the capsule for the return journey.

After much research and deliberation, NASA announced last week that out of an abundance of caution, the two astronauts would instead fly home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft in February 2025, with the Starliner returning empty.

And now we have a target date for what’s set to be a crucial flight for Boeing’s space vehicle.

In Thursday’s blog post, NASA said that all being well, the uncrewed Starliner spacecraft will perform a fully autonomous return overseen by flight controllers at Starliner Mission Control in Houston and at Boeing Mission Control Center in Florida.

It added that if the Starliner fails to perform as expected, teams on the ground will be able to remotely command the spacecraft through the necessary maneuvers for a safe undocking, re-entry, and parachute-assisted landing.

But clearly it’s not so confident that it’s willing to put Williams and Wilmore aboard the spacecraft for the journey home.

The current mission is the Starliner’s third flight to date. The first one in December 2019 ended in failure when the vehicle was unable to reach the ISS, though it returned safely. Its second test flight, in 2022, managed to successfully dock with the ISS and also return home.






NASA’s Space Launch System rocket arrives at Kennedy

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After completing its journey from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility aboard the Pegasus barge, teams with Exploration Ground Systems transport the agency’s powerful SLS (Space Launch System) core stage to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building on July 23.
After completing its journey from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility aboard the Pegasus barge, teams with Exploration Ground Systems transport the agency’s powerful SLS (Space Launch System) core stage to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building on July 23. NASA/Isaac Watson

NASA’s epic Space Launch System rocket, standing 322 feet tall when fully stacked, has recently been on an similarly epic journey — traveling from New Orleans to Florida via barge. The rocket began its journey more than two weeks ago, and having covered more than 900 miles has now arrived safe at the Kennedy Space Center.

The core stage was manufactured and assembled at the Michoud Assembly Facility, and had to travel to Kennedy to be ready for integration and testing ahead of the Artemis II test flight. It will be used to carry crew members on a 10-day journey around the moon and back, including NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Reid Wiseman plus Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

“With Artemis, we’ve set our sights on doing something big and incredibly complex that will inspire a new generation, advance our scientific endeavors, and move U.S. competitiveness forward,” said Catherine Koerner, associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, when the core stage set off on its journey. “The SLS rocket is a key component of our efforts to develop a long-term presence at the Moon.”

Before the launch, however, there’s still a lot of work to be done to get the core stage ready for flight. It is now in the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy, where it will be set into the mobile launcher — the platform that hooks it up to the ground systems — and integrated with the Orion spacecraft that will house the crew. In addition, the core stage need to have its twin solid rocket boosters and launch vehicle stage adapter added, and then the entire assembly will need thorough testing to ensure it’s ready to fly.

Artemis II is currently scheduled for September next year, following on from the Artemis I mission in November 2022 that saw an uncrewed version of the SLS and Orion capsule travel around the moon and back to Earth. That mission was a success; however, some components were damaged during the launch, and the launch of the first crewed mission was pushed back to accommodate more time for development and integration.

The long-term plan is to return humans to the surface of the moon for the first time in more than 50 years in the Artemis III mission, tentatively scheduled for September 2026.






SpaceX facing FAA review for Starship launches from Kennedy

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SpaceX's Starship rocket lifting off in November 2023.
SpaceX

SpaceX currently launches the Starship — the most powerful rocket ever built — from its Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, but it also wants to launch it from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

For that to happen, its plans will first have to be cleared by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) by way of an environmental review, the agency announced on Friday.

NASA carried out a similar review five years ago and saw no issue with SpaceX launching the Starship from Kennedy, but since then the Elon Musk-led spaceflight company has adjusted its plans for the Starship and its associated infrastructure, prompting the FAA to announce its own review to assess the impact of the launches on the local environment.

Changes to SpaceX’s plan at Kennedy include a greater frequency of launches from 24 per year to as many as 44, and a slightly more powerful rocket design. SpaceX also wants to land the first-stage booster at Launch Complex 39A instead of at Landing Zone 1.

Pumping out a colossal 17 million pounds of thrust at launch — more than double that of the Saturn V rocket that powered the Apollo astronauts toward the moon from the same launch facility five decades ago, and almost twice that of NASA’s next-gen Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which launched fro the first time in November 2022 — the Starship has a greater chance of disrupting the local environment than any other vehicle that’s launched from Florida’s Space Coast.

The maiden launch of the Starship, which has only flown three times to date, completely destroyed the Starbase launch pad when the force of the engines proved too great as the rocket lifted off. Debris was spread far and wide and into protected wildlife areas, causing consternation among environmentalists. SpaceX responded by building a more robust pad capable of handling subsequent launches.

These days, residents along the Space Coast are used to seeing launches involving SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which spits out a mere 1.7 million pounds of thrust at launch, as well as the occasional mission by SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, which is three times more powerful. Starship launches, however, will be something else altogether.

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