Boeing Starliner


Boeing Starliner is a class of reusable crew capsules expected to transport crew to the International Space Station and to private space stations such as the proposed Bigelow Aerospace Commercial Space Station. It is manufactured by Boeing for its participation in NASA's Commercial Crew Program.
The capsule has a diameter of, which is slightly larger than the Apollo command module and smaller than the Orion capsule. The Boeing Starliner holds a crew of up to seven people and is being designed to be able to remain in-orbit for up to seven months with reusability of up to ten missions. It is designed to be compatible with four launch vehicles: Atlas V, Delta IV, Falcon 9, and Vulcan.
In the first phase of its CCP, NASA awarded Boeing US$18 million in 2010 for preliminary development of the spacecraft. In the second phase Boeing was awarded a $93 million contract in 2011 for further spacecraft development. On 3 August 2012, NASA announced the award of $460 million to Boeing to continue work on the Starliner under the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability Program. On 16 September 2014, NASA selected the Boeing Starliner, along with SpaceX Crew Dragon, for the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability program, with an award of $4.2 billion.
The Boeing Starliner Orbital Flight Test launched with the Atlas V N22, on 20 December 2019 from SLC-41 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. During the test, the Starliner experienced a timing anomaly that precluded a docking with the International Space Station. Two days after launch, on 22 December 2019 at 12:58 UTC, with the successful landing at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, the Boeing Starliner Calypso became the first-ever crew-capable space capsule to make a land-based touchdown in the United States.

Background

The design draws upon Boeing's experience with NASA's Apollo, Space Shuttle and ISS programs as well as the Orbital Express project sponsored by the Department of Defense. Starliner has no Orion heritage, but it is sometimes confused with the earlier and similar Orion-derived Orion Lite proposal that Bigelow Aerospace was reportedly working on with technical assistance from Lockheed Martin. It will use the NASA Docking System for docking and use the Boeing Lightweight Ablator for its heat shield. The Starliner's solar cells will provide more than 2.9 kW of electricity, and will be placed on top of the micro-meteoroid debris shield located at the bottom of the spacecraft's service module.
It is designed to be compatible with multiple launch vehicles, including the Atlas V, Delta IV, and Falcon 9, as well as the planned Vulcan.
Unlike earlier U.S. space capsules, Starliner will make airbag-cushioned landings on the ground rather than into water. Five landing areas are planned in the Western United States, which will give the Starliner about 450 landing opportunities every year.
Starliner includes one space tourist seat, and the Boeing contract with NASA allows Boeing to price and sell passage to low Earth orbit on that seat.

Development

The name was first used when the capsule was revealed to the public by Bigelow Aerospace CEO Robert Bigelow in June 2010. The letters CST stand for Crew Space Transportation. It was often reported that the number 100 in the name stands for, the height of the Kármán line which is one of several definitions of the boundary of space, The Rocketdyne RS-88 engine will be used for its launch escape system.
Receiving the full fixed-price payments for the CCP Phase 1 Space Act Agreement required a set of specific milestones to be met during 2010:
in October 2011
In July 2010, Boeing stated that the capsule could be operational in 2015 with sufficient near-term approvals and funding, but also indicated they would proceed with the development of the Starliner only if NASA implemented the commercial crew transport initiative that was announced by the Obama administration in its FY2011 budget request. Boeing executive Roger Krone stated that NASA investment would allow Boeing to close the business case, while this would be very difficult without NASA. In addition, a second destination besides the ISS would be needed to close the business case and Krone said that cooperation with Bigelow was crucial for this.
Boeing was awarded a $92.3 million contract by NASA in April 2011 to continue to develop the under CCDev phase 2. On 3 August 2012, NASA announced the award of $460 million to Boeing to continue work on the under the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability Program.
On 31 October 2011, NASA announced that through a partnership with Space Florida, the Orbiter Processing Facility-3 at Kennedy Space Center would be leased to Boeing for manufacture and test of Starliner.
On 16 September 2014, NASA chose Boeing and SpaceX as the two companies that will be funded to develop systems to transport U.S. government crews to and from the International Space Station. Boeing won a $4.2 billion contract to complete and certify the Starliner by 2017, while SpaceX won a $2.6 billion contract to complete and certify their crewed Dragon spacecraft. The contracts include at least one crewed flight test with at least one NASA astronaut aboard. Once the Starliner achieves NASA certification, the contract requires Boeing to conduct at least two, and as many as six, crewed missions to the space station. NASA's William H. Gerstenmaier considers the Starliner proposal as stronger than the two others.
Part of the agreement with NASA allows Boeing to sell seats for space tourists. Boeing proposed including one seat per flight for a space flight participant at a price that would be competitive with what Roscosmos charges tourists.
On 4 September 2015, Boeing announced that the spacecraft would officially be called the Starliner, a name that follows the conventions of the 787 Dreamliner produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. In November 2015, NASA announced it had dropped Boeing from consideration in the multibillion-dollar Commercial Resupply Services second-phase competition to fly cargo to the International Space Station.
In May 2016, Boeing delayed its first scheduled Starliner launch from 2017 to early 2018. Then in October 2016, Boeing delayed its program by six months, from early 2018 to late 2018, following supplier holdups and a production problem on the Spacecraft 2. By 2016, they were hoping to fly NASA astronauts to the ISS by December 2018.
In April 2018, NASA suggested the first planned two-person flight of the Starliner, slated for November 2018, was now likely to occur in 2019 or 2020. If the delays are maintained it would be expected to carry one additional crew member and extra supplies. Instead of staying for two weeks as originally planned, NASA said the expanded crew could stay at the station for as long as six months as a normal rotational flight.

Testing

A variety of validation tests have been underway on test articles since 2011.
In September 2011, Boeing announced the completion of a set of ground drop tests to validate the design of the airbag cushioning system. The airbags are located underneath the heat shield of the Starliner, which is designed to be separated from the capsule while under parachute descent at about altitude. The airbags are deployed by filling with a mixture of compressed nitrogen and oxygen gas, not with the pyro-explosive mixture sometimes used in automotive airbags. The tests were carried out in the Mojave Desert of southeast California, at ground speeds between in order to simulate crosswind conditions at the time of landing. Bigelow Aerospace built the mobile test rig and conducted the tests.
In April 2012, Boeing dropped a mock-up of its Starliner over the Nevada desert at the Delamar Dry Lake near Alamo, Nevada, successfully testing the craft's three main landing parachutes from.
In August 2013, Boeing announced that two NASA astronauts evaluated communications, ergonomics, and crew-interface aspects of the Starliner, showing how future astronauts will operate in the spacecraft as it transports them to the International Space Station and other low Earth orbit destinations.
Boeing reported in May 2016 that its test schedule would slip by eight months in order to reduce the mass of the spacecraft and aerodynamics issues anticipated during launch and ascent on the Atlas V rocket. The Orbital Flight Test is scheduled for spring 2019. The booster for this Orbital Flight Test, an Atlas V N22 rocket, is being assembled at ULA's facility at Decatur, Alabama. The first crewed flight is scheduled for summer 2019, depending on test results from Boe-OFT. It is planned to last 14 days and carry one NASA astronaut and one Boeing test pilot to the ISS. On 5 April 2018, NASA announced that the first planned two-person flight, originally slated for November 2018, is likely to occur in 2019 or 2020. If this delay occurs the mission could be expected to carry one additional crew member and supplies. NASA said the expanded crew could stay at the station for as long as six months as a normal rotational flight. This is due to the ending of the agreement for Russia to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station in late 2019. NASA has named its first Commercial Crew astronaut cadre of four veteran astronauts to work with SpaceX and Boeing: Robert Behnken, Eric Boe, Sunita Williams, and Douglas Hurley. In July 2018, Boeing announced the assignment of former NASA astronaut Christopher Ferguson to the Boe-CFT mission.
In July 2018, a test anomaly was reported in which there was a hypergolic propellant leak due to several faulty abort system valves. Consequentially the first unpiloted orbital mission was delayed to April 2019, and the first crew launch rescheduled to August 2019. In March 2019, Reuters reported these test flights had been delayed by at least three months, and in April 2019 Boeing announced that the unpiloted orbital mission was scheduled for August 2019.
In May 2019, all major hot-fire, including simulations of low-altitude abort thruster testing, was completed using a full up to service module test article that was "flight-like", meaning that the service module test rig used in the recent hot-fire testing included fuel and helium tanks, reaction control system, orbital maneuvering, and attitude control thrusters, launch abort engines and all necessary fuel lines and avionics that the ones that will be used for crewed missions will have. This clears the way for the pad abort test and the subsequent uncrewed and crewed flights later. A pad abort test took place on 4 November 2019. The capsule accelerated away from its pad, but then one of the three parachutes failed to deploy and the capsule landed with only two parachutes. Landing was however deemed safe, and the test a success. Boeing did not expect the malfunction of one parachute to affect the Starliner development schedule.

First orbital flight test

The orbital flight test launched on 20 December 2019, but after deployment, an 11-hour offset in the mission clock of Starliner caused the spacecraft to compute that "it was in an orbital insertion burn", when it was not. This caused the attitude control thrusters to consume more fuel than planned, precluding a docking with the International Space Station. The spacecraft landed at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, two days after launch. After the successful landing, the spacecraft was named Calypso by the commander of the Boeing Starliner-1 mission, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams.
Two software errors detected during the test, one of which prevented a planned docking with the International Space Station, could each have led to the destruction of the spacecraft had they not been caught and corrected in time, NASA said on 7 February 2020. A joint NASA-Boeing investigation team "found the two critical software defects were not detected ahead of flight despite multiple safeguards", according to an agency statement. "Ground intervention prevented the loss of the vehicle in both cases". Before re-entry, engineers discovered the second critical software error that affected the thruster firings needed to safely jettison the Starliner's service module. The service module software error "incorrectly translated" the jettison thruster firing sequence.

Second orbital flight test

Boeing officials said on 6 April 2020, that the Starliner crew capsule will fly a second time without astronauts after software problems and other issues plagued a first test flight on 20 December 2019, preventing the ship from reaching the International Space Station. Boeing confirmed that it will fly a second uncrewed demonstration mission — an Orbital Flight Test — before astronauts ride a Starliner into orbit in 2021. NASA said it accepted a recommendation from Boeing to fly a second unpiloted mission. The Washington Post reported the second Orbital Flight Test, with much the same objectives as the first, is expected to launch from Cape Canaveral "sometime in October or November 2020". Boeing said it would fund the unplanned crew capsule test flight "at no cost to the taxpayer". Boeing told investors earlier this year it was taking a $410 million charge against its earnings to cover the expected costs of a second unpiloted test flight.

List of spacecraft

As of January 2020, Boeing plans to have three Boeing Starliner spacecraft in service to fulfill the needs of the Commercial Crew Program with each spacecraft expected to be capable of being reused up to ten times with a six-month refurbishment time. As of May 2020, Boeing plans to have two Boeing Starliner spacecraft in service.

List of flights

List includes only completed or currently manifested missions. Launch dates are listed in UTC.
MissionVehicleLaunch date
CrewRemarksDurationOutcome
Boe-PATSpacecraft 14 November 2019, 14:15:00Pad abort test, White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. One of three parachutes failed to open due to being rigged incorrectly before launch, but parachute system functioned adequately.95 seconds
Boe-OFTCalypso20 December 2019, 11:36:43First uncrewed orbital test flight of Starliner. The mission's main objective of ISS rendezvous was aborted due to software incorrectly keeping mission time, leading to a late orbital insertion burn with excessive fuel expenditure. Starliner landed in New Mexico two days after launch.2 days
Boe-OFT 2Spacecraft 2Mid-November 2020Second uncrewed orbital test flight of Starliner added due to partial failure of previous test flight. Will attempt to dock with the ISS.8 days
Boe-CFTUnknownApril 2021 Christopher Ferguson
Mike Fincke
Nicole Mann		First crewed test flight of Boeing Starliner.
Starliner-1CalypsoNET 2021 Sunita Williams
Josh Cassada
TBA
TBA		First operational flight of Boeing Starliner. This will be a reflight of the OFT vehicle which was christened Calypso by mission commander Williams upon its return to earth.
Starliner-2 to Starliner-6MultipleNET 2022-2026 TBA
TBA
TBA
TBA		Following Starliner-1, NASA has contracted Boeing for at least five more operational flights to the ISS.

Crew

On 3 August 2018, NASA announced the astronauts who will participate in the first Starliner flights. Eric Boe was one of those initially selected, but was replaced by Michael Fincke in January 2019 due to "personal medical reasons".