Photo: Boeing
With the fate of crewed space missions at the hands of SpaceX in doubt following the explosion of the Crew Dragon the back in April, rival company Boeing is doing its best to stay on track in the hopes that maybe this year we’ll get to see astronauts departing from American soil.
At NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, the company recently conducted a hot fire test of the capsule’s propulsion system, showing that both in-space maneuvering and emergency abort can be performed as safely as needed.
For the test, a Starliner capsule was fitted with all the parts that will eventually make it into the ISS-bound capsule: fuel tanks, helium tanks, reaction control system, orbital maneuvering and attitude control thrusters, launch abort engines and all necessary fuel lines and avionics.
During the procedure, 19 thrusters were fired to simulate in-space maneuvers, 12 to simulate high-altitude abort and 22 to mimic a low-altitude abort.
"The milestone paves the way for the upcoming pad abort test and flights to and from the International Space Station later this year,” said the man in charge with the commercial crew program at Boeing, John Mulholland.
The Starliner is similar in size to the Orion capsule being built for NASA by Lockheed Martin, with a diameter of 4.56 meters (15.0 ft). It can be fitted on top of a variety of rockets, including SpaceX’s Falcon, the Atlas V, Delta IV and the Vulcan.
Up to seven astronauts can fit inside the spacecraft, but only five can be taken up at a time if cargo is loaded.
As a premiere for American-made spacecraft, the Starliner will be capable of landing on solid soil rather than on the water, thanks to the use of an airbag landing system in addition to the parachutes used to slow it down while coming back to Earth.
The first actual flight of the Starliner is scheduled for August, on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.
For the test, a Starliner capsule was fitted with all the parts that will eventually make it into the ISS-bound capsule: fuel tanks, helium tanks, reaction control system, orbital maneuvering and attitude control thrusters, launch abort engines and all necessary fuel lines and avionics.
During the procedure, 19 thrusters were fired to simulate in-space maneuvers, 12 to simulate high-altitude abort and 22 to mimic a low-altitude abort.
"The milestone paves the way for the upcoming pad abort test and flights to and from the International Space Station later this year,” said the man in charge with the commercial crew program at Boeing, John Mulholland.
The Starliner is similar in size to the Orion capsule being built for NASA by Lockheed Martin, with a diameter of 4.56 meters (15.0 ft). It can be fitted on top of a variety of rockets, including SpaceX’s Falcon, the Atlas V, Delta IV and the Vulcan.
Up to seven astronauts can fit inside the spacecraft, but only five can be taken up at a time if cargo is loaded.
As a premiere for American-made spacecraft, the Starliner will be capable of landing on solid soil rather than on the water, thanks to the use of an airbag landing system in addition to the parachutes used to slow it down while coming back to Earth.
The first actual flight of the Starliner is scheduled for August, on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.
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