Boeing’s Uncrewed CST-100 Overcame System Issues Completes Mission

On 19 May 2020, NASA and Boeing’s joined forces to launch the Boeing Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) uncrewed CST-100 into space aboard the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket, destination, International Space Station (ISS).

Late last week, the CST-100 returned, landing at the White Sands Missile Range, in New Mexico around 6:45pm EDT.

While the return landing was ‘textbook’ its trip to the ISS wasn’t entirely without issue.  Apparently, on its way to the ISS, two of its main thrusters went offline per sensor data, but backups kicked into gear and it was on its merry way. And again, problems arose when the CST-100 got close to the ISS, two positioning thrusters that were to assist in docking with the spacecraft also had problems. A third issue was the failure of the spacecraft’s thermal control system whose job is to keep the spacecraft at the right temperature.

Despite the aforementioned issues, both NASA and Boeing considered the mission a success and reemphasized their commitment to Boeing as an alternative to SpaceX for carrying cargo and astronauts to the ISS. Mr. Mark Nappi, a VP of Boeing who oversees the Starliner program, said that despite the problems, the “spacecraft is in excellent condition,” and that it “performed like it was supposed to”. Mr. Steve Stich, a Manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program stated tat while the issues were overcome, the “failures” they will “study the failures there and see what happened”, even though they had “a lot of redundancy”. Both NASA ad Boeing are optimistic about being able to send a crewed mission by the end of this year!

FMI: https://nasa.gov, https://boeing.com