Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft failed to put itself on the correct course during an uncrewed test flight to the International Space Station on Friday.
Starliner successfully launched into space aboard a rocket Friday morning, but after detaching from the launch vehicle, Starliner did not perform as intended, Boeing said in a statement.
After detaching, Starliner was supposed to make a precise maneuver to put itself on a path to link up with the space station on Saturday. But the spacecraft failed to fire up its engines at the correct moment.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a tweet that the error will prevent Starliner from reaching the ISS on this mission.
He said an error with the vehicle’s Mission Elapsed Time (MET) caused “the spacecraft to believe that it was in an orbital insertion burn, when it was not.”
Boeing said in a statement that the company “and NASA are working together to review options for the test and mission opportunities available.”
More information is expected at a 9:30 am ET press conference on NASA TV.
The mission
HOUSTON, TX – OCTOBER 24: A mockup of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft is seen inside the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility during a media preview for an upcoming public open house at NASA’s Johnson Space Center on October 24, 2018 in Houston, Texas. The public open house will celebrate NASA’s 60th anniversary and the International Space Station’s 20th anniversary. (Photo by Loren Elliott/Getty Images)
Starliner was scheduled to dock with the space station over the weekend, mimicking the flight path it will take when it flies its first crewed mission. The craft was also expected to spend one week in space before making the trek back home and landing in the desert of New Mexico.
Aboard the capsule is a dummy nicknamed Rosie, after the iconic World War II figure Rosie the Riveter, which is outfitted with dozens of sensors to measure the G-forces astronauts will endure.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Thursday that he expected the vehicle to be ready for its first crewed mission in “the first part” of next year.
It’s not exactly clear when that will now happen, or even if Starliner will be the first US spacecraft to launch NASA astronauts since the Space Shuttle program was retired in 2011.
Billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX is also racing for that distinction, and its Crew Dragon capsule completed a successful uncrewed test flight earlier this year. But it still must pass another test of the capsule’s emergency abort system before it’s ready to fly. That mission is scheduled for no earlier than January 11.
Commercial Crew and the business of space
NASA allotted SpaceX $2.6 billion and Boeing $4.2 billion in 2014 for the Commercial Crew Program, the formal name of the program that will launch Crew Dragon and Starliner. It was a new approach for the agency: While NASA has long worked with private sector contractors to build spacecraft, the organization does not typically hand over design, operation and testing duties to the companies.
“We’re doing it in a way that’s never been done before,” Bridenstine said Thursday. “We’re buying a service. The goal being that NASA wants to be one customer of many customers in a very robust commercial marketplace for human spaceflight in the future [and] we want to drive down costs, increase innovation and increase access to space in a way that we’ve never seen before.”
NASA has long said it wants the private sector to take over operations at the ISS, which orbits about 250 miles above Earth, so that the space agency can focus on the more expensive and dangerous task of exploring deep space — including the moon and beyond.
Commercial Crew was modeled after a similar program that delivers uncrewed cargo missions to the International Space Station. SpaceX also won a contract under that program, alongside Northrop Grumman, and its Dragon capsule has been flying supplies to and from the space station for years. But the company has yet to fly humans.
Bridenstine said Thursday that Boeing received more money than SpaceX for Commercial Crew because SpaceX was already given billions of dollars under the cargo program for Dragon development, while Boeing essentially had to design Starliner from scratch.
Commercial Crew: What’s ahead
NASA originally predicted Starliner and Crew Dragon would be up and running by 2017, but both vehicles are years behind schedule.
The space agency, as well as federal lawmakers, are anxious to speed things up. Since 2011, the space agency has paid Russia an average of$55.4 million per seat for rides aboard the country’s Soyuz spacecraft to ensure Americans had access to the space station.
Three astronauts have been selected to join Starliner’s first crewed launch: NASA’s Michael Fincke and Nicole Mann, as well as Chris Ferguson, a retired NASA astronaut who led the final 2011 Space Shuttle mission. Ferguson will fly as a commercial astronaut on behalf of Boeing.
Ferguson is the first non-government astronaut signed up to fly on Crew Dragon or Starliner. But NASA has suggested allowing people with various backgrounds to train and fly to space alongside members of its astronaut corps.
Ferguson said during Thursday’s press conference that “opportunities abound” to fly astronauts from foreign space agencies and, one day, “customers who might come from any walk of life.”
Those people may include “teachers, maybe journalists, maybe artists that are able to gather everything we see in space, the amazement of what we’re doing, and they’re able to translate that back to people on Earth,” said Mann. “That’s going to pay dividends.”
