INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Boeing Starliner CST-100 crew spacecraft got off to a great start on its first-ever launch to the International Space Station this morning
— but despite the rocket and launch vehicle performing as expected, the Starliner spacecraft itself hit a bit of a snag when it came time
for its own post-launch mission to begin.
The Starliner capsule successfully separated from the ULA Centaur second-stage rocket that brought
it to its sub-orbital target in space, but when the Starliner was supposed to light up its own engines and propel itself to its target
orbit, the requisite burn didn&t happen
Boeing instead said that the spacecraft achieved a stable position to charge up its solar-powered batteries, and that it was working on the
ground with its team to figure out which maneuvers come next to get the spacecraft where it needs to be.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine
provided via Twitter at 8:45 AM EST the first substantial update about what went wrong, noting that there was an incident wherein the
Starliner spacecraft &believed it was in an orbital insertion burn, when it was not.&
Update: #Starliner had a Mission Elapsed Time (MET)
anomaly causing the spacecraft to believe that it was in an orbital insertion burn, when it was not
More information at 9am ET: https://t.co/wwsfqqvLN7
— Jim Bridenstine (@JimBridenstine) December 20, 2019
This means its mission clock
encountered some kind of bug or error that told the Starliner systems it was at a different point in the mission procedure than it actually
As a result, the spacecraft burned more fuel than it was supposed to and missed its intended orbital insertion point
The Starliner has subsequently done a second burn and is in a stable orbit, but it is no longer capable of reaching the International Space
Station as planned.
At a press conference that kicked off around 9:38 AM EST, the NASA administrator kicked off remarks by noting that &a
lot of things went right& in today mission, regardless of the problems encountered.
&When the space craft separated from the launch vehicle,
we did not get the desired orbital insertion burn that we were hoping for,& he continued, noting again that the spacecraft believed it was
at a different stage in the mission than it actually was
Once ground control was able to send a manual command to correct it, it was &too late& to salvage the full mission of actually reaching the
Space Station as planned because too much propellant was already burned.
Bridenstine also speculated that were NASA astronauts actually on
board, they would &absolutely& have &been safe,& and that they probably could&ve assisted and overcome the automation error encountered via
manual control to save the mission.
ULA CEO Tory Bruno explained that this was a fully successful launch from the perspective of the Atlas V
launch vehicle, which flew in a different configuration than usual for the first time, so they consider it a win for their perfect launch
record, having &literally hit a bullseye& for their target mission parameters.
&It appears that the vehicle was using a mission elapsed
timer that was not the mission elapsed timer that the mission was on,& explained Boeing Senior Vice President of Space and Launch Jim
&We don&t know why that happened.&
The Starliner is currently in an orbit that will allow it to turn back to Earth in 48 hours, which
Bridentstine and Chilton said in itself will be an important test of the landing system
Once on the ground, teams will be better able to figure out what happened on board the spacecraft with the Mission Elapsed Timer (MET)
error.
As for what this means for the overall Boeing Commercial Crew mission, and whether this will impact the timing and sequence of the
crewed flight test that was supposed to take place next, all parties say it too early to tell and they&ll need to do more investigation into
what happened before determining whether there a need for another full orbital flight test before putting crew on a first test launch.
