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Boeing’s Starliner mission is safely docked with the International Space Station after navigating new problems that surfaced overnight and Thursday en route to the orbiting laboratory.
Docking occurred at 1:34 pm ET. Steps were taken to more firmly secure the connection between the Starliner and the space station port, and docking was completed about 20 minutes later. Now, the mission teams will work towards opening the gap between the spacecraft and the station, which is estimated to happen at 3:20 pm ET.
Once the hatch is open, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will spend the next eight days on the station, joining the seven astronauts and cosmonauts already on the station.
“It’s great to be connected to the big city in the sky,” Wilmore said after the anchor was confirmed.
After a successful launch that was a decade in the making, Boeing’s Starliner mission experienced a helium leak and a temporary loss of thrusters during its journey to the space station, according to NASA.
During the final hour of their approach to the space station, the Starliner crew began manually piloting the spacecraft in a planned test of the Starliner’s manual flight control capability. Five of the thrusters of the feedback control system failed in the service module, but the pair were able to get four of the thrusters to fire again after conducting hot-fire tests.
These smaller thrusters are used as the spacecraft moves closer to the space station so it can make more fine-tuned changes in its trajectory. There are a total of 28 such thrusters located in the service module, or the underside of Starliner, which will not return to Earth.
Starliner was expected to dock with the space station by 12:15 p.m. ET, but a thruster issue caused a delay and the mission moved to a new docking window.
During thruster testing, the Starliner maintained a distance of about 820 feet (250 meters) from the space station until it was deemed “safe for orbit,” away from an invisible 656-foot (200-meter) “keep out” limit. to protect the station.
The Starliner also faced another problem during its journey: helium leaks.
The space agency said late Wednesday in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that two additional helium leaks had been detected in the vehicle. A helium leak had been detected prior to takeoff and was deemed acceptable.
“Helium is used in spacecraft propulsion systems to allow the propellants to ignite and is not flammable or toxic,” according to Boeing.
As of Thursday morning, two of the three leaks have been fixed, according to a NASA live stream.
Mission managers surveyed “go” for meetings and communications with the space station, and the leaks are not expected to affect docking, according to the release.
“During all Starliner rendezvous and rendezvous operations, we’ll keep those thrusters open, but they’ll stay open until docking. The Starliner is currently maintaining sufficient helium reserves,” Boeing aerospace engineer Jim May confirmed Thursday morning in a social media post on X shared by Boeing.
“Currently the helium leak is not a safety issue for the crew, vehicle or mission.”
The flight control team will continue to monitor leak rates in the Starliner’s propulsion system, and after docking, all Starliner manifolds were shut down according to normal plans, according to NASA.
Just as Wilmore and Williams were about to go to sleep Wednesday night, mission control informed them that they needed to close two valves because of new helium leaks.
“Teams have identified three helium leaks in the spacecraft. One of these was previously discussed prior to flight along with a management plan,” NASA shared in the post. “The other two are new since the spacecraft arrived in orbit. Two of the affected helium valves have been closed and the spacecraft remains stable.”
A related exchange had occurred earlier in the NASA broadcast.
“Looks like we’ve had some more helium leaks,” mission control told the astronauts, as heard on the broadcast. Controllers then walked the crew through the plan to close the valves.
“Butch, I’m sorry. We’re still piecing the story together,” mission control replied.
“We’re about to … find out exactly what you mean by another helium leak, so give it to us,” Wilmore told them.
NASA and Boeing determined the crew was safe and told the pair to sleep while they continued to look at the data. The crew was supposed to sleep for nine hours, but the troubleshooting effort was interrupted by an hour’s rest.
“We’ve got some issues to look at overnight, with the helium leaks that were just mentioned, and we’ve got a lot of smart people here on the ground who are going to take a look at these things and keep an eye on them, but the vehicle is in a configuration now where they are safe to fly,” Boeing aerospace engineer Brandon Burroughs said in the NASA broadcast.
The long-awaited Starliner journey lifted off atop an Atlas V rocket on Wednesday at 10:52 a.m. ET from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The historic launch marked the first time a spacecraft has carried a crew into space.
The mission, known as the Crew Flight Test, is the culmination of Boeing’s efforts to develop a spacecraft to rival SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule and expand the United States’ options for transporting astronauts to the space station under the Commercial Program of the NASA Crew. The federal agency’s initiative aims to foster collaboration with private industry partners.
The flight marks just the sixth inaugural flight of a crewed spacecraft in US history, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson noted at a press conference in May.
“It started with Mercury, then Gemini, then Apollo, Space Shuttle, then (SpaceX’s) Dragon — and now Starliner,” Nelson said.
Williams also made history as the first woman to fly such a mission.
“This is another milestone in this incredible NASA story,” Nelson said Wednesday after launch. “And I want to give my personal congratulations to the whole team that went through a lot of trials and tribulations. But they persevered, and that’s what we do at NASA. We don’t leave until it’s right.”
Just after Wednesday’s launch, NASA officials shared that Williams and Wilmore may enjoy a slightly extended stay on the station. The earliest possible landing date is June 14.
“We have a set landing date that goes along with this launch date, but I just want to emphasize that nobody should get too excited about that date,” said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate. -s. “We need to have a lot of conditions that are right before we bring the Starliner home, and we’ll wait until the conditions are right and we’ve met the test objectives before we do that.”
A number of problems caused earlier crewed launch attempts, on May 6 and June 1, to be scrapped.
Two hours before the May 6 launch attempt, engineers identified a problem with a valve in the second stage, or upper section, of the Atlas V rocket, which was built by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin. . The entire assembly, including the rocket and spacecraft, was withdrawn from the launch pad for testing and repairs.
The teams also worked through a small helium leak inside the spacecraft’s service module and a “design vulnerability” in the propulsion system.
After solving problems with the initial helium leak in May, mission specialists determined that it did not pose a threat to the flight. During the countdown to launch Wednesday morning, crews monitored the leak and reported no problems.
Starliner was just 3 minutes and 50 seconds from liftoff Saturday afternoon when an automatic hold was triggered by the ground launch sequence, or computer that launches the rocket.
United Launch Alliance technicians and engineers evaluated ground support equipment over the weekend, examining three large computers housed inside a shelter at the base of the launch pad. Each computer is identical, providing triple redundancy to ensure the safe launch of manned missions.
Engineers isolated the issue that halted Saturday’s launch attempt to a single ground power supply inside one of the computers, which provides power to the computer cards responsible for key countdown events, according to an update distributed by NASA.
They removed the computer and replaced it with a spare.
