Transmission #003 Boeing’s Oof-T2
Starliner’s second orbital flight test is indefinitely postponed
Boeing’s bedeviled and costly Commercial Crew capsule
It’s often said that space is hard. It gets even harder when the cargo is a crew. And right now the alignment problem with one or some of the valves that control fuel flow to Boeing’s Starliner capsule’s service module’s 52 engines is keeping the spacecraft in the hanger at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
This is just the latest in a string of delays, flubs and costly setbacks for the Seattle, Wash. company and NASA’s Commercial Crew program. If Boeing cannot find and fix the issue soon, the Starliner will need to be separated from the Atlas V rocket and returned to the factory, which is thankfully just down the road at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
Boeing officials say they are working through the weekend and remain hopeful they will be able to stay at the pad and launch soon as they were able to open some of the valves. They are in a time crunch because the United Launch Alliance, which provides the rocket, needs its hanger to integrate NASA’s Lucy spacecraft for an October launch of a 12-year mission to study Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids.
Trouble started on a Thursday
The most recent trouble started on Thursday, July 29, when a problem at the International Space Station involving Russia’s Nauka science module postponed the orbital flight test, or OFT, that was scheduled for the next day.
The next launch window opened the following Tuesday, August 3, and closed Wednesday, August 4. It was on Monday, August 2, during the pre-launch checks that indicators pointed to the valve issues that remain, through the time of publication, unresolved.
The launch of the OFT2 mission was supposed to be Boeing’s second chance to prove the Staliner’s autonomous capabilities to reach the correct orbit, rendezvous and dock with the International Space Station, and return to earth, all the while keeping astronauts safe and comfy. An anthropomorphic test dummy outfitted with an array of sensors was already buckled in to monitor the ride and the environment.
It was not made clear which of the service module’s three types of Aerojet Rocketdyne engine systems - 40,000 pounds of thrust, 15,000 pounds, and 100 pounds - that the valves in question are connected. The engines are used for sub-orbital and on-orbit maneuvering, with the most powerful used for whisking astronauts away from the launch vehicle - a rocket - in the event of a launch failure. The Aerojet Rocketdyne contract, inked with Boeing in 2015, was worth $200M.
What the heck happened the first time?
NASA required Boeing to undergo OFT2 because during the Starliner’s first OFT in late 2019 potentially catastrophic software issues were discovered after an internal clock bug caused the un-manned Starliner to be inserted into the wrong orbit. That first glitch triggered an urgent software review, where it was discovered that the crew and service modules had been programmed to bump into each other after separation during the descent sequence.
Engineers fixed the software anomalies and the Starliner crew module was returned to earth without incident, for the first U.S. land-based touchdown of a human-rated spacecraft. Nevertheless, the NASA certification requirement to dock with the ISS was missed. OFT1 was a bust.
NASA issued a rare “high-visibility close call,” triggering an “organizational root cause assessment” - a much deeper and comprehensive probe into the organizational processes of both Boeing and NASA. Knowing a second OFT was needed, Boeing took a “$410 million pre-tax charge to provision for the additional uncrewed mission for the Commercial Crew program as well as several performance items.”
By my reckoning, the Starliner pricetag, including OFT2, has now grown to at least $4.7B in both NASA and Boeing funds. When the prohibitively exorbitant number was smaller in 2019, it prompted a NASA Inspector General report, which revealed that the space agency had agreed to reimburse Boeing with $287.2M, above the multibillion-dollar fixed-price contract, for costs related to making up for lost time. That didn’t include the OFT debacle.
Meanwhile SpaceX
At the outset, NASA’s Commercial Crew program awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX to separately develop human-rated launch systems and spacecraft that the companies would then own and operate. And in theory the competition between the two companies should get NASA more space miles for its dollars.
Buying rides to LEO destinations, such as the ISS, is part of the space agency’s push to shift responsibility for LEO activities, including the space station, to commercial operators. With industry working in orbit, NASA can better focus on building the infrastructure to push out the frontier of human space exploration to Mars.
SpaceX is also looking beyond LEO, having had its Crew Dragon already NASA certified and on track to launch its third manned mission to the ISS this October. And it got it done last year for $2.5B.
Now the company is developing a lunar Human Lander System under a $2.89B NASA contract, and is impatiently awaiting FAA approval to test-launch its Starship-Super Heavy configuration, which it’s developing on its own dime and its founder Elon Musk’s billions.
While Musk is undoubtedly loaded, he’s been launching a broadband internet service that will provide connectivity pole-to-pole via a constellation of small satellites called Starlink. Musk is betting that the profit from Starlink will fund the Starship project and the building of a city on Mars… Star City?
Random Signals
Who wouldn’t want to take a Mars rover for a spin? British Prime Minister Boris Johnson took the ExoMars rover for a spin when he opened and then toured Airbus’ new £35M UK space and defense headquarters in Hertfordshire. Johnson stood inside a giant indoor sandbox and haltingly took the remote control to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) robot, which is scheduled to launch in 2022. Here’s the video showing that Johnson’s choice of career was wise.
On the planet Mars, NASA’S Curiosity Rover logged sol 3199. That’s nine earth years of… well… roving and digging, sampling, analyzing and taking photos and sending selfies since it landed on the red planet on August 5, 2012. You can follow it’s travels and discoveries on Twitter or read the Curiosity blog, written by an international group of scientists and engineers that work with the rover.
Advanced Space, located in Westminster, Colo., announced that the company and NASA’s CAPSTONE cube satellite, which the company developed and will operate for $13.7M, passed its second Operations Readiness Test and remains on track to launch sometime in this year’s fourth quarter. CAPSTONE, which stands for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, is “a microwave oven–sized cubesat weighing just 55 pounds,” that NASA will use to study the viability of the planned orbit for the Gateway, a giant manned lunar satellite under development.
Without explanation, Long Beach Calif.-based Rocket Lab has moved the launch of NASA’s CAPSTONE mission from the space agency’s Wallops Island launch range to New Zealand’s Māhia Launch Complex on the east coast of North Island. The $9.95M NASA contract is for Rocket Lab’s Electron launch system to take the company’s Photon spacecraft to LEO, where the two will separate. From LEO, the Photon will carry the cubesat for seven days before they separate. Then the CAPSTONE starts its three-month journey to the moon.
The US Space Force is looking to solar technologies as a method to power operations near the moon, in what is called cislunar space. The USSF awarded to Rhea Space Activity a $50,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 study contract to develop its solar thermal propelled Scorpius spacecraft concept.
More at-sea U.S. Navy sailors will be able to talk to folks back home and stream movies without a glitch. The USN awarded L3Harris an $18M contract to increase commercial and military satellite communications under the service’s Commercial Broadband Satellite Program.
On-orbit microgravity manufacturing got an influx of cash. Founders Fund principal Delian Asparouhov and SpaceX veteran Will Bruey said they raised $42M in a Series A offering for their eight-month start-up Varda Space Industries. They say they are using off-the-shelf parts to build a three-module spacecraft that the two hope will be contracted by other companies for on-orbit manufacturing.