A few hours ago, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner Calypso spacecraft landed at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, ending its Boe-CFT (Boeing Crew Flight Test) mission. Unlike the previous American spacecraft, this one doesn’t splash down in the ocean but lands on the ground. It was an automated return trip while Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who had arrived at the International Space Station on June 6 aboard the Calypso, remained on the Station.
NASA deemed that the thruster system wasn’t reliable enough to deal with possible emergency situations that required precision maneuvering. For example, emergencies include the possibility of a spacecraft departing the International Space Station but then needing to re-dock, for example, due to a failure of the onboard life support systems. The Calypso has maneuverability that was deemed sufficient to return to Earth but not to re-dock with the Station, a situation that isn’t a problem on an automated trip but is unacceptable with a crew on board.
This is the end of a mission that once again highlighted the problems of the Starliner spacecraft. It was supposed to last about a week and dispel doubts by certifying that the Starliner could carry astronauts. Instead, it ended after three months of testing and difficult decisions, with the result that increased those doubts with consequences that are yet to be seen for Boeing.
During the three months spent docked at the International Space Station, many tests were conducted on the thrusters of the Starliner Calypso spacecraft to try to understand exactly their nature and the possible solutions. The hope was to be able to bring the astronauts back to Earth on the Calypso, but in the end, NASA didn’t trust it despite Boeing’s reassurances.
When the capsule lands, it does so after separating from the service module that includes the thrusters, and this makes it impossible to conduct laboratory tests to understand if oxidation, corrosion, or other types of degeneration of some component occurred in space. For this reason, NASA and Boeing’s teams extended the time spent in space and conducted many firing tests to obtain at least some useful data.
In the meantime, other thrusters built for other Starliner spacecraft were tested, trying to simulate as much as possible the conditions to which they are subjected in space. After testing, one thruster was disassembled and a Teflon component was found to be deformed. However, the test that caused that deformation on Earth didn’t have the same effect on the Calypso thrusters, suggesting that there are other problems, including helium leaks.
Eventually, Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams became part of the International Space Station’s regular crew and will return to Earth together with two colleagues assigned to SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission. For Boeing, this is a very negative result that adds to the problems that affected the company’s airplanes in recent years.
The situation is complex and has already been the subject of analysis over the past few years, after the many problems that led to delays and missions with less-than-spectacular outcomes. There’s a contract with NASA worth 4.2 billion dollars, compared to the 2.6 billion contract with SpaceX for the Crew Dragon spacecraft, but all the problems encountered are already causing Boeing to operate at a loss. Without trying to assess the long-term consequences for Boeing’s relationship with NASA, the Starliner’s problems must be fixed: will the company do that?
