2024-07-27 12:10:41
ISTANBUL
After weeks of troubleshooting and recent tests to replicate the issues affecting Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, NASA and Boeing officials still cannot provide a return date for the two astronauts piloting the spacecraft on its inaugural crewed test flight, as reported by CNN.
Nonetheless, engineers finally have some potential answers regarding what ultimately caused some of the Starliner’s problems during the first stage of its journey, which included helium leaks and thrusters that abruptly stopped working en route to the International Space Station.
Boeing and NASA have spent the past few weeks working on the ground to understand the issue and have planned some additional tests for this weekend that should help clarify the problems, said Mark Nappi, manager of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program.
In a location in New Mexico, engineers ignited the test engines more than 1,000 times, replicating how the Starliner’s thrusters would have fired on their way to space.
According to Boeing, they later fired the thruster to test various ways in which the engines could ignite on the way back home from space.
The goal of these tests is to better understand why the spacecraft’s thrusters shut down unexpectedly and what dangers, if any, are associated with reigniting them.
Officials said that, with the ground tests, they were able to recreate how the thrusters failed in space during flight.
The tests may have helped engineers gain a better understanding of the “root cause” of the issue: accumulated heat within the thrusters could be causing the Teflon seals to bulge, which restricts fuel flow.
Those tests “have given us additional confidence to decouple” from the station “in return,” said Nappi.
*Translated by Daniel Gallego.
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