A review of the troubled Starliner mission in 2024 has classified the spacecraft’s first-ever crewed flight as a “Type A mishap,” a category encompassing the most severe unplanned events that pose a threat to life.
The spacecraft experienced issues with its thrusters on approach to the International Space Station (ISS) just over two years ago, and for a brief period of time lost the ability to safely orient itself.
After managing to dock, the two astronauts aboard the Starliner, NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, expected to return home 10 days later. But engineers, after failing to resolve the issue, decided out of an abundance of caution to bring the Starliner home empty. Williams and Wilmore ended up staying at the ISS for about nine months before returning to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon capsule.
NASA’s Program Investigation Team (PIT), an independent group established by the space agency about a year ago, on Thursday publicly released its report into the incident in which it designated the troubled Starliner mission as a “Type A mishap.” This is the agency’s most serious classification, and puts the Starliner flight in the same category as the space shuttle Challenger and Columbia mission, which both suffered catastrophic failures.
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, NASA associate administrator Amit Kshatriya described the Starliner mission as “a really challenging event in our recent history,” adding, “We almost did have a really terrible day.”
Recently appointed NASA chief Jared Isaacman, also at the press conference, said that the Starliner has “design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected,” but added that “the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware. It’s decision-making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human space flight.”
Isaacman said the spacecraft would not carry crew again “until technical causes are understood and corrected, the propulsion system is fully qualified, and appropriate investigation recommendations are implemented.” In the meantime, NASA will continue to rely on SpaceX for crewed flights to and from the ISS.
In sections that make for uncomfortable reading, PIT’s report includes remarks from unnamed individuals who worked on the Starliner, such as, “There was yelling in meetings. It was emotionally charged and unproductive.” Another comment said, “If you weren’t aligned with the desired outcome, your input was filtered out or dismissed,” while another said, “It was probably the ugliest environment I’ve been in.”
Isaacman promised that PIT’s report would be taken seriously, adding that “there will be accountability.”
Responding to the report, Boeing said in a statement on its website: “In the 18 months since our test flight, Boeing has made substantial progress on corrective actions for technical challenges we encountered and driven significant cultural changes across the team that directly align with the findings in the report.
“NASA’s report will reinforce our ongoing efforts to strengthen our work, and the work of all Commercial Crew Partners, in support of mission and crew safety, which is and must always be our highest priority.”
NASA and Boeing modified their Commercial Crew contract last November, announcing an uncrewed Starliner cargo mission for no earlier than April this year, followed by up to three crewed rotations before the ISS is retired in 2030. But there’s also a chance that the Starliner will never fly again.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.