NASA will announce today whether its stranded astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, will come home on the problematic Starliner craft they arrived on, some time in September, or will be enjoying an even lengthier stay on ISS until returning home on a SpaceX Dragon with Crew 9 in February 2025. Launched on June 5th, Butch and Suni's flight to ISS and stay was only supposed to last only eight days.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and leadership will hold an internal Agency Test Flight Readiness Review on Saturday, Aug. 24, for NASAâs Boeing Crew Flight Test. About an hour later, NASA will host a live news conference at 1 p.m. EDT from the agencyâs Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Rumours are suggesting the nod will go to SpaceX Dragon. If so, the Starliner program suffers a massive credibility hit - and may go back to development and testing, or get cancelled altogether. Boeing is rumored to have already lost ~$1.6B on Starliner.
This is so embarrassing for Boeing and NASA, and the most insane advertising campaign imaginable for SpaceX.
NASA is having a bad run of luck. Now the Cygnus resupply craft to ISS, launched yesterday, failed to conduct some altitude raising burns. Will they fix it? Will it make it to ISS? Stay tuned!
Shortly after launch, the spacecraft missed its first burn slated for 11:44 a.m. due to a late entry to burn sequencing. Known as the targeted altitude burn, or TB1, it was rescheduled for 12:34 p.m., but aborted the maneuver shortly after the engine ignited due to a slightly low initial pressure state. There is no indication the engine itself has any problem at this time.
Cygnus is at a safe altitude, and Northrop Grumman engineers are working a new burn and trajectory plan. The team aims to achieve the spacecraftâs original capture time on station, which is currently slated for 3:10 a.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 6.
At issue is the performance of the small reaction control system thrusters in proximity to the space station. If the right combination of them fail before Starliner has moved sufficiently far from the station, Starliner could become uncontrollable and collide with the space station. The thrusters are also needed later in the flight back to Earth to set up the critical de-orbit burn and entry in Earth's atmosphere.
Ho-lee muther! They not only got super heavy to the location desired, they captured its soft landing into the ocean! Next up with IFT5 - they'll try to catch it in the chopsticks!
Location: On the edge of tomorrow looking back at Gender:
Posted:
Jun 7, 2024 - 8:42am
Boeing is an over bloated crap fest. Not the same one I knew from the 60âs and 70âs. They over run project milestones, are upping the cost of below par work that they pass on to us, and have a management team that seems to be powered by a clueless society of inept leaders only interested in the Benjamins.
Weâve been lucky so far that nobody has parishes in a catastrophic event.
If you're unlucky enough to be one of my kids, you'd know my opinions about the tremendous luck I associate with being born at just about the perfect time, in the right place, in history...the 60s... after the wars (too young for Vietnam) ... before the internet...with the greatest popular music explosion... and jet travel... and live TV from across the planet... and then the arrival of the internet.... all with an appreciation that what just happened in space is an amazing accomplishment showcasing the utter brilliance of thousand upon thousand of humans, that those born a bit later take for granted.
ok, I'm not really the let's go to Mars fan-boy, but a comment I read recently about the Valles Marineris just needing a roof to create the perfect geo-engineering scenario made me think, yeah, actually, I could imagine that.
Here's an ESA video of just part of it. a smaller canyon to the north.
hard to imagine the challenges and the engineering to deal with them
continental and/or global dust dtorms, high winds and temp extremes, etc.
