Boeing saved its new Starliner spaceship from disaster. Here's how the mission unfolded and what it could mean for NASA astronauts. - Business Insider

Boeing safely landed its first CST-100 Starliner spaceship, named „Calypso,“ in New Mexico on Sunday.
No astronauts flew aboard the Starliner. The mission was designed to show the vehicle, which NASA funded through its Commercial Crew Program, is safe to fly astronauts.
But the Starliner suffered a major glitch with a clock shortly after launch, causing it to veer off-course.
Boeing rescued the mission, which NASA officials said should achieve about 90% of its objectives despite not reaching its planned destination, the International Space Station.
However, no one could say whether or not the company’s next mission would be a redo of the uncrewed test flight or the first with astronauts riding inside.
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Boeing and NASA officials seemed proud, and perhaps a little giddy, after the company’s first new orbital-class spaceship, the CST-100 Starliner, landed with barely a scratch in New Mexico on Sunday.

„You look at the landing, it was an absolute bull’s-eye. Better than, I think, anybody anticipated,“ Jim Bridenstine, NASA’s administrator, said during a press conference that day. „That’s good for the agency, it’s good for Boeing, and it’s good for the United States of America.“

But just two days before, the autonomous spacecraft – which carried no people on its maiden flight – suffered from a critical timing error that, without intervention from mission control, likely would have ended with the loss of the uncrewed Starliner and its cargo of food and Christmas presents bound for the International Space Station.

More importantly, the Orbital Flight Test mission was designed to show NASA the spacecraft is safe to fly astronauts on a follow-up test flight, ostensibly planned for mid-2020.

„It’s disappointing for us,“ Jim Chilton, the senior vice president of Boeing’s Space and Launch division, said of the error just after launch on Friday.

Here’s what happened during the historic mission and why both Boeing and NASA officials now, after landing „Calypso,“ as astronauts have named the space-worthy ship, seem surprisingly upbeat about its performance.

Boeing designed the CST-100 Starliner to fly up to seven passengers. NASA funded the work with a $4.2 billion contract.

Foto: A Boeing technician works on the Starliner crew test capsule inside the orbital processing facility at Kennedy Space CentersourceReuters

Source: Business Insider

The money comes from the Commercial Crew Program, which NASA started 2010. The goal: Have companies, not the US government, build new spaceships to reach the International Space Station.

Foto: The International Space Station.sourceNASA

Source: Business Insider

NASA desperately needs those commercial spaceships because it retired its fleet of space shuttles in July 2011.

Foto: Space shuttle Atlantis at Launchpad 39A in Cape Canaveral, Fla.sourceDave Mosher

Ever since then, NASA has solely — and uncomfortably — relied on Russia to ferry US astronauts to and from orbit inside that nation’s Soyuz spacecraft. A single round-trip ticket now costs NASA more than $80 million.

Foto: The Soyuz-FG rocket booster with Soyuz MS-11 space ship carrying a new crew to the International Space Station, ISS, blasts off at the Russian leased Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Monday, Dec. 3, 2018.sourceDmitri Lovetsky/AP

Source: Business Insider

Help is on the way, though. Out of a dozen companies, Boeing and SpaceX made it through NASA’s competition with two independent spaceship designs.

Foto: Nine astronauts will fly the first four crewed missions inside SpaceX and Boeing’s new spaceships for NASA, called Crew Dragon and CST-100 Starliner, respectively.sourceNASA via AP

Before Boeing’s Starliner vehicle can fly astronauts, though, NASA requires a series of test flights and demonstrations.

Foto: The Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft is guided into position above a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at the Vertical Integration Facility at Space Launch Complex 41 at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Nov. 21, 2019.sourceCory Huston/NASA

NASA requires Starliner to fly astronauts to safety in the unlikely event of a rocket-launch failure. So Boeing developed new engines …

Foto: A thruster designed to help Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner blast away from a launchpad in an emergency.sourceAerojet Rocketdyne

… And tested them on a full escape system in November. The test showed Starliner can automatically blast away from impending disaster.

Foto: Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner’s four launch abort engines and several orbital maneuvering and attitude control thrusters ignite during the company’s Pad Abort Test on Nov. 4, 2019.sourceNASA JSC/Boeing

Though the engines initially leaked, and the parachutes took years to perfect — such a system hadn’t been used since the Apollo program decades ago — Boeing eventually persevered.

Foto: Boeing conducts its first parachute reliability tests of the CST-100 Starliner over Yuma, Arizona.sourceNASA

Source: Business Insider

These and many other subsystems culminated in the first-ever orbital launch of a Starliner at 6:36 a.m. ET on December 20.

Foto: The Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, atop a ULA Atlas V rocket, lifts off for an uncrewed Orbital Flight Test to the International Space StationsourceReuters

Source: Business Insider

Nobody was inside except a mannequin named Rosie. There was also some food, Christmas presents, and other cargo for astronauts aboard the space station.

Foto: This Nov. 1, 2019 photo provided by Boeing shows Rosie the astronaut test dummy positioned in the space capsule at Kennedy Space Center.sourceAssociated Press

Source: NASA

The spaceship rode toward space atop an Atlas V rocket, built by United Launch Alliance. It lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Foto: Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner space capsule stands atop an Atlas V rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida.sourceNASA

Source: Business Insider

To viewers of a NASA TV livestream, the flight seemed to be smoothly for more than half an hour.

Foto: A computer rendering of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spaceship launching aboard an Atlas V rocket.sourceBoeing

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The Starliner separated from the Atlas V after about 15 minutes.

Foto: A computer rendering of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spaceship launching aboard an Atlas V rocket.sourceBoeing

Source: Business Insider

But mission control knew something was wrong shortly after that. About 31 minutes into the mission, Starliner was supposed to have automatically fired its engines to set a course for the space station — but it never did.

Foto: A computer rendering of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spaceship firing its four main engines to reach orbit.sourceBoeing

Source: Business Insider

When the rocket disconnected from the Starliner, the ship’s clock was 11 hours too far ahead. This caused the ship’s autonomous navigation system to fire small reaction-control thrusters and adjust its position in space —for a phase of the mission it had not yet reached.

Foto: An animation of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner using its reaction control system thrusters to adjust its position in space.sourceBoeing

Source: Business Insider

And possibly because Starliner wasn’t in the right position, it had trouble connecting with NASA satellites: Mission Control couldn’t immediately override the autonomous system and tell the ship to fire its main engines for orbit.

Foto: An illustration of NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, TDRS-M, in orbit.sourceNASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Source: Business Insider

As a result, the Starliner burned through about 25% of its fuel before Mission Control finally took remote-control of the ship. There wasn’t enough fuel to reach the space station — only rescue the ship into a stable orbit and prevent it from crashing to Earth.

Foto: An illustration of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spaceship flying around Earth.sourceBoeing

Source: Business Insider

It was a tense moment for everyone on the mission, though officials said human pilots could have made a big difference. „Had we had an astronaut on board, we very well may be at the International Space Station right now,“ Bridenstine said on Sunday.

Foto: NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine discusses the status of the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft orbital test flight at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida December 20, 2019.sourceJoe Skipper/Reuters

Source: NASA via YouTube

That’s because — according to NASA managers, Boeing officials, and astronauts themselves — a person would have seen the ship had missed a critical engine burn.

Foto: NASA commercial crew astronauts Nicole Mann, Michael Fincke, Suni Williams, Josh Cassada, and Eric Boe pose for a picture in front of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft onboard ahead of the Orbital Flight Test mission launch on December 18, 2019 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.sourceJoel Kowsky/NASA

At that point, someone would have used Starliner’s manual controls to bypass the autopilot and take over the flight.

Foto: NASA astronaut and Commercial Crew member Sunita Williams uses a Boeing CST-100 Starliner display trainer.sourceNASA/Dimitri Gerondidakis

So while the Starliner never reached its target destination, Christmas presents and all, and did not dock with the ISS …

Foto: An illustration of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner docking to the International Space Station.sourceBoeing

… Everyone was happy the spaceship was saved.

Foto: The Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, atop an ULA Atlas V rocket, lifts off on an uncrewed Orbital Flight Test from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on December 20, 2019.sourceJoe Skipper/Reuters

„I’d like to express Boeing’s regrets to the ISS crew to whom we did not bring the Christmas presents,“ Boeing’s Chilton said. „That’s not cool. We own it.“

Foto: Jim Chilton, Boeing senior vice president, Space and Launch Division, speaks during a briefing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida following launch of Boeing’s Orbital Flight Test, Dec. 20, 2019.sourceKim Shiflett/NASA

Source: NASA via YouTube

Starliner ended up orbiting Earth for about two days instead of a week. Along the way, Boeing tested out as many systems as possible. Chilton said on Sunday that the mission probably achieved about 85-90% of its objectives for NASA.

Foto: A computer rendering of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spaceship orbiting Earth.sourceBoeing

Source: NASA via YouTube

Early Sunday morning, the Starliner shed its service module and orbital thrusters.

Foto: A computer rendering of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spaceship jettisoning its service module before returning to Earth.sourceBoeing

This allowed the space capsule to turn its heat shield toward Earth’s atmosphere, absorb and deflect the heat of reentry, and safely return to the planet.

Foto: A computer rendering of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spaceship returning to Earth using a heat shield to deflect and absorb the heat of atmospheric reentry..sourceBoeing

The capsule deployed its parachutes over NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, popped off its heat shield …

Foto: The Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft jettisons the heat shield before it lands in White Sands, New Mexico, on December 22, 2019.sourceAubrey Gemignani/NASA

… And blew up impact-absorbing airbags before landing in the desert.

Foto: A computer rendering of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spaceship using parachutes and airbags to land in the desert.sourceBoeing

The space capsule landed gently on the sandy turf just before dawn on Sunday.

Foto: The Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft is seen after it landed in White Sands, New Mexico, on December 22, 2019.sourceBill Ingalls/NASA

Ground crews made of Boeing, NASA, and US Army personnel had trained for months for this moment and were ready to recover the ship.

Foto: Boeing and NASA teams rehearse to recover the recovery of a CST-100 Starliner spaceship at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico on September 19, 2019.sourceBill Ingalls/NASA

And because the ship landed right where it was supposed to, the recovery team reached the Starliner in minutes.

Foto: The Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft lands in White Sands, New Mexico, on December 22, 2019.sourceAubrey Gemignani/NASA

„When we look at how the launch vehicle, the Atlas V and Starliner, perform, it’s an incredibly good design. We didn’t see any major problems,“ Steve Stich, the deputy manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said during Sunday’s press briefing.

Foto: Boeing, NASA, and US Army personnel collect parachutes around the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft shortly after it landed in White Sands, New Mexico, on December 22, 2019.sourceBill Ingalls/NASA

Source: NASA via YouTube

Recovery of the Starliner capsule is crucial: Boeing plans to launch and reuse it many times with refurbishment.

Foto: Boeing, NASA, and U.S. Army personnel work around the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft shortly after it landed in White Sands, New Mexico, on December 22, 2019.sourceBill Ingalls/NASA

The Starliner that launched over the weekend won’t be the first to fly people. But its supposed to be refurbished and fly NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Josh Cassada, perhaps sometime next year.

Foto: NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Suni Williams, who are assigned to fly on the first operational flight of Boeing’s Starliner, are seen during a press conference ahead of the Boeing Orbital Flight Test mission on December 19, 2019, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.sourceJoel Kowsky/NASA

Williams named the recovered Starliner spaceship „Calypso“ after the ship of famed explorer Jacques Cousteau.

Foto: The research vessel „Calypso“ of Captain Cousteau arriving in Montreal on August 30, 1980.sourceRené Beauchamp (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Source: NASA

NASA wouldn’t say if Boeing needs to repeat an uncrewed Starliner mission or proceed to first-ever mission with astronauts. Bridenstine would only say it could take months to review all of the mission’s data and arrive at a decision.

Foto: NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine is seen during a press conference at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center following the launch of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft on December 20, 2019.sourceJoel Kowsky/NASA

Source: NASA via YouTube

Whatever the case, and perhaps even at a major cost to Boeing, Chilton said the company would do whatever it takes to fly astronauts — including another uncrewed test. „We’re in. Simple as that,“ he said during a teleconference on Saturday.

Foto: The Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft rolls out from the company’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 21, 2019.sourceCory Huston/NASA

Source: NASA

NASA says there is no race to resurrect human spaceflight capabilities in the US, but SpaceX could be the very first to fly astronauts.

Foto: An illustration of a NASA astronaut flying with Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon space capsules.sourceNASA/Kennedy Space Center (via Flickr); Boeing; Shayanne Gal/Business Insider

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon already completed its orbital flight and docking test, called Demo-1. That space capsule later exploded during a test, though.

Foto: An illustration of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, also known as Dragon 2 or Dragon V2, orbiting Earth. (The first Dragon was a cargo and supply ship not designed to carry people.)sourceKennedy Space Center/SpaceX via Flickr

Source: Business Insider

Despite the setback, SpaceX has made up for lost time, completed the same test, and is planning a launch-abort test in January. After that, NASA may decide SpaceX is ready to launch astronauts as soon as Spring 2020.

Foto: A test of SpaceX’s Dragon v2 capsule thrusters.sourceSpaceX/Flickr (public domain)

Source: NASA

Both companies may ultimately fly astronauts, giving NASA two ways, as Bridenstine often likes to say, to fly American astronauts from American soil on American rockets for the first time in nearly a decade.

Foto: Astronaut Victor Glover raises his hands after being selected to fly on the second crewed mission of Crew Dragon, a spaceship that SpaceX designed and built for NASA.sourceDavid J. Phillip/AP

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Boeing saved its new Starliner spaceship from disaster. Here's how the mission unfolded and what it could mean for NASA astronauts. - Business Insider

Boeing designed the CST-100 Starliner to fly up to seven passengers. NASA funded the work with a $4.2 billion contract.

The money comes from the Commercial Crew Program, which NASA started 2010. The goal: Have companies, not the US government, build new spaceships to reach the International Space Station.

NASA desperately needs those commercial spaceships because it retired its fleet of space shuttles in July 2011.

Ever since then, NASA has solely — and uncomfortably — relied on Russia to ferry US astronauts to and from orbit inside that nation’s Soyuz spacecraft. A single round-trip ticket now costs NASA more than $80 million.

Help is on the way, though. Out of a dozen companies, Boeing and SpaceX made it through NASA’s competition with two independent spaceship designs.

Before Boeing’s Starliner vehicle can fly astronauts, though, NASA requires a series of test flights and demonstrations.

NASA requires Starliner to fly astronauts to safety in the unlikely event of a rocket-launch failure. So Boeing developed new engines …

… And tested them on a full escape system in November. The test showed Starliner can automatically blast away from impending disaster.

Though the engines initially leaked, and the parachutes took years to perfect — such a system hadn’t been used since the Apollo program decades ago — Boeing eventually persevered.

These and many other subsystems culminated in the first-ever orbital launch of a Starliner at 6:36 a.m. ET on December 20.

Nobody was inside except a mannequin named Rosie. There was also some food, Christmas presents, and other cargo for astronauts aboard the space station.

The spaceship rode toward space atop an Atlas V rocket, built by United Launch Alliance. It lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

To viewers of a NASA TV livestream, the flight seemed to be smoothly for more than half an hour.

The Starliner separated from the Atlas V after about 15 minutes.

But mission control knew something was wrong shortly after that. About 31 minutes into the mission, Starliner was supposed to have automatically fired its engines to set a course for the space station — but it never did.

When the rocket disconnected from the Starliner, the ship’s clock was 11 hours too far ahead. This caused the ship’s autonomous navigation system to fire small reaction-control thrusters and adjust its position in space —for a phase of the mission it had not yet reached.

And possibly because Starliner wasn’t in the right position, it had trouble connecting with NASA satellites: Mission Control couldn’t immediately override the autonomous system and tell the ship to fire its main engines for orbit.

As a result, the Starliner burned through about 25% of its fuel before Mission Control finally took remote-control of the ship. There wasn’t enough fuel to reach the space station — only rescue the ship into a stable orbit and prevent it from crashing to Earth.

It was a tense moment for everyone on the mission, though officials said human pilots could have made a big difference. „Had we had an astronaut on board, we very well may be at the International Space Station right now,“ Bridenstine said on Sunday.

That’s because — according to NASA managers, Boeing officials, and astronauts themselves — a person would have seen the ship had missed a critical engine burn.

At that point, someone would have used Starliner’s manual controls to bypass the autopilot and take over the flight.

So while the Starliner never reached its target destination, Christmas presents and all, and did not dock with the ISS …

… Everyone was happy the spaceship was saved.

„I’d like to express Boeing’s regrets to the ISS crew to whom we did not bring the Christmas presents,“ Boeing’s Chilton said. „That’s not cool. We own it.“

Starliner ended up orbiting Earth for about two days instead of a week. Along the way, Boeing tested out as many systems as possible. Chilton said on Sunday that the mission probably achieved about 85-90% of its objectives for NASA.

Early Sunday morning, the Starliner shed its service module and orbital thrusters.

This allowed the space capsule to turn its heat shield toward Earth’s atmosphere, absorb and deflect the heat of reentry, and safely return to the planet.

The capsule deployed its parachutes over NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, popped off its heat shield …

… And blew up impact-absorbing airbags before landing in the desert.

The space capsule landed gently on the sandy turf just before dawn on Sunday.

Ground crews made of Boeing, NASA, and US Army personnel had trained for months for this moment and were ready to recover the ship.

And because the ship landed right where it was supposed to, the recovery team reached the Starliner in minutes.

„When we look at how the launch vehicle, the Atlas V and Starliner, perform, it’s an incredibly good design. We didn’t see any major problems,“ Steve Stich, the deputy manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said during Sunday’s press briefing.

Recovery of the Starliner capsule is crucial: Boeing plans to launch and reuse it many times with refurbishment.

The Starliner that launched over the weekend won’t be the first to fly people. But its supposed to be refurbished and fly NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Josh Cassada, perhaps sometime next year.

Williams named the recovered Starliner spaceship „Calypso“ after the ship of famed explorer Jacques Cousteau.

NASA wouldn’t say if Boeing needs to repeat an uncrewed Starliner mission or proceed to first-ever mission with astronauts. Bridenstine would only say it could take months to review all of the mission’s data and arrive at a decision.

Whatever the case, and perhaps even at a major cost to Boeing, Chilton said the company would do whatever it takes to fly astronauts — including another uncrewed test. „We’re in. Simple as that,“ he said during a teleconference on Saturday.

NASA says there is no race to resurrect human spaceflight capabilities in the US, but SpaceX could be the very first to fly astronauts.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon already completed its orbital flight and docking test, called Demo-1. That space capsule later exploded during a test, though.

Despite the setback, SpaceX has made up for lost time, completed the same test, and is planning a launch-abort test in January. After that, NASA may decide SpaceX is ready to launch astronauts as soon as Spring 2020.

Both companies may ultimately fly astronauts, giving NASA two ways, as Bridenstine often likes to say, to fly American astronauts from American soil on American rockets for the first time in nearly a decade.

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