Less than a week after its launch from the Cape Canaveral US
Space Force Base in Florida, the CST-100 Starliner capsule plunged through
Earth's atmosphere Wednesday evening ahead of a parachute-assisted descent over
the desert of White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico. It touched down on time at
6:49pm EDT (22:49 GMT).
The roughly five-hour return trip from the space station, an
orbital outpost some 250 miles above Earth, checks off the last leg of a repeat
test flight that Boeing had first attempted in 2019, but failed to complete
after running into software failures.
The latest test mission moves Starliner, beset by repeated
delays and costly engineering setbacks, a major step closer to providing NASA
with a second reliable avenue for ferrying astronauts to and from the space
station.
Starliner was lofted to orbit last Thursday atop an Atlas V
rocket furnished by the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture United Launch
Alliance and achieved its main objective – a rendezvous with the ISS, even
though four of its multiple onboard thrusters malfunctioned along the way.
Boeing engineers also had to improvise a workaround for a
thermal control defect during the final approach of the capsule to the space
station.
Since resuming crewed flights to orbit from American soil in
2020, nine years after the space shuttle programme ended, the US space agency
has had to rely solely on Falcon 9 rockets and Crew Dragon capsules from
billionaire Elon Musk's private company SpaceX.
Previously, the only other option for reaching the orbiting
laboratory was by hitching rides aboard Russia's Soyuz spacecraft, an
alternative currently less attractive in light of heightened US -Russian
tensions over the war in Ukraine.
Much is on the line for Boeing, as the Chicago-based company
scrambles to climb out of successive crises in its jetliner business and
space-defense unit. The Starliner programme alone has cost the company nearly
$600 million over the past two and two and half years.
An ill-fated first orbital test flight of Starliner in late
2019 nearly ended with the vehicle's loss following a software glitch that
effectively foiled the spacecraft's ability to reach the space station.
Subsequent problems with Starliner's propulsion system,
supplied by Aerojet Rocketdyne, led Boeing to scrub a second attempt to launch
the capsule last summer.
Starliner remained grounded for nine more months while the
two companies sparred over what caused fuel valves to stick shut and which firm
was responsible for fixing them.
The do-over test mission that wrapped up on Wednesday could
pave the way for Starliner to fly its first astronaut crew to the space station
sometime next year, pending a redesign of Starliner's propulsion system valves
and a resolution of the thruster issues that popped up mid-mission.
The orbiting outpost is currently home to a crew of three US
NASA astronauts, an Italian astronaut from the European Space Agency, and three
Russian cosmonauts. While Starliner was parked to the station, some of those
astronauts boarded the capsule to analyse its cabin conditions. © Reuters
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