SpaceX Crew Dragon, a relative newcomer to
the space industry, may have led NASA to focus
its scrutiny on the Boeing Starliner capsule.
After a couple of rounds of investigation
and some soul-searching, NASA and Boeing believe
that they have identified what went wrong
that prevented an unpiloted Boeing Starliner
capsule from docking with the International
Space Station last year.
Boeing has now been given no less than 80
recommendations to put into practice, in what
is an alarming display of the problems at
the aerospace company.
The agency recommended to clear the way for
a second test flight.
The 80 recommendations include the 61 presented
to Boeing this past March after the first
phase of the investigation, according to NASA.
Boeing has already been working through several
of these suggestions and is targeting a second
uncrewed test of its CST-100 Starliner system
later this year, though an actual date has
not been specified.
At a press conference on 07 Jul, Tuesday,
Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial
Crew Program, would not say when the company
might be cleared to launch the Starliner on
a repeat of the unpiloted flight other than
it probably "would be toward the latter part
of this year."
"I really want Boeing and our team to go through
the software recommendations and make the
changes to the software and test the software,"
Stich told reporters.
"And then once we start to see how that shakes
out we'll talk a little be more about when
to go fly."
NASA officials said the agency’s relationship
with Boeing remains untarnished and that the
company will not play second fiddle to other
partners, namely SpaceX.
When asked if NASA could opt to abandon the
Starliner program if Boeing runs into more
problems during the upcoming unpiloted flight,
Stich said the space agency is committed to
having two spacecraft providers as a hedge
against downstream problems that could ground
either company in the midst of operational
crew rotation flights.
“I cannot imagine a situation in which SpaceX
is the only commercial provider,” said Steve
Stich, during the conference.
In this video Engineering Today will discuss
Why NASA has a Pretty Big Checklist for Boeing
to Fix on Starliner?
Why NASA Steps Up Boeing Software Scrutiny
With Lessons From SpaceX?
Why SpaceX, a relative newcomer to the space
industry, may have led NASA to focus its scrutiny
on Boeing Starliner capsule?
Let’s get into details.
Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, launched
on top of an Atlas 5 rocket on Dec. 20, encountered
two major software problems during its flight.
The first occurred minutes after the spacecraft
had separated from the rocket, because the
capsule’s clock had been set wrong.
That caused the spacecraft to squander its
propellant, and a planned docking at the International
Space Station was called off.
That problem, combined with a communications
glitch, prevented a rendezvous and docking
with the space station.
This caused Starliner to burn excess fuel,
making it impossible for it to rendezvous
with the International Space Station.
Boeing engineers then found another software
oversight that would have fired the wrong
thrusters as Starliner was preparing for re-entry.
As Boeing engineers hastily combed through
the Starliner software in the aftermath of
the clock problem, they found that problem
and fixed it.
If it had not been fixed, two pieces of Starliner
— the capsule that returns to Earth and
the service module, which is discarded — might
have collided.
The capsule might have tumbled and burned
up in the atmosphere instead of landing safely
in White Sands.
The timing error later was characterized as
“high visibility close calls” by NASA
prompting an additional, more focused investigation
and additional recommendations to address
organizational issues.
It was a huge disappointment for NASA but
particularly for Boeing—one of two private
space companies currently participating in
NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, an continuing
effort to restore America’s ability to launch
astronauts from U.S. soil.
The less-than-perfect Starliner mission was
considered a setback for Boeing in December,
but in hindsight it’s even worse, given
recent events; on May 30, SpaceX—the other
Commercial Crew Program participant—successfully
launched two NASA astronauts Robert Behnken
and Douglas Hurley, to the space station in
SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.
The two astronauts are in orbit working on
experiments and maintenance of the space station
and will attempt a return trip in the SpaceX
Crew Dragon capsule around August 2, setting
the stage for SpaceX's first operational crew
rotation flight in the mid-September timeframe.
Soon after the failed Starliner orbital insertion,
Boeing and NASA blamed a Mission Elapsed Timer
(MET) glitch, where clocks on the spacecraft
and Atlas V rocket were out of synch.
In March, the joint NASA-Boeing Independent
Review team presented the preliminary findings,
revealing far more issues with the mission.
Naturally, this's the reason we test: to uncover
possible problems.
But when compared with the smooth sailing
of the crewed SpaceX Demo-2 mission in May,
this was obviously a royal mess.
That said, NASA officials attempted to cast
it almost all in a positive light.
“We learned that there’s the potential
for these pretty pervasive software issues
that we thought would’ve been caught,”
said Kathy Lueders, former manager of the
Commercial Crew Program and now the director
of Human Exploration and Operations at NASA
Headquarters.
“This is a really huge learning opportunity
for us to look at our other processes with
a new lens...and catch the errors at the right
time.”
The 80 recommendations are not publicly available,
as they apparently contain sensitive proprietary
data, but NASA did provide a broad idea of
what Boeing needs to do.
Altogether, the recommendations are being
implemented to improve testing and simulations;
process and operational improvements; software
; requirements ; “knowledge capture” and
hardware modifications.
“This is about tweaking the system, right?
This is about tweaking the spacecraft and
tweaking the software to make sure that these
particular errors that were found are fixed,”
said Kathy Lueders.
“So we are making progress and doing the
next steps to go fly with Boeing next year.”
NASA has added much more of its team members
to the Boeing side to enhance integration,
explained Stich.
He said Boeing is making modifications to
Starliner’s software system and communication
to make sure this doesn’t occur again.
Boeing “is very committed to finding problems,”
he added.
Boeing and SpaceX are both building piloted
astronaut ferry ships for NASA under commercial
contracts valued at some $6.8 billion.
The goal is to end the agency’s sole reliance
on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to carry U.S.
crews to and from the International Space
Station.
Both companies designed, built and own their
spacecraft.
They both agreed to launch one unpiloted test
flight to the station and one piloted mission
before beginning operational crew rotation
flights.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk keeps his promises.
In terms of why the SpaceX Demo-2 test went
off without a hitch while the Starliner test
was replete with issues and now in need of
dozens of fixes.
Lueders and Stich said part of the issue was
that NASA got fixated on SpaceX’s novel
developmental approach, that meant the space
agency wasn’t predisposed to concentrate
on Boeing’s much more familiar approach,
especially when it concerned software development.
In addition to the software errors that slipped
through undetected and were not fixed before
the spacecraft was launched in December, NASA
officials admitted that decades of working
with Boeing gave them a level of trust.
As a result, it might not have been paying
attention to the company as closely as it
should have.
“It’s one that we have used in the past
on successful NASA programs like space shuttle
and the International Space Station.”
Steve Stich said.
Interestingly, NASA might incorporate a SpaceX-like
approach to its own development strategies,
in which program engineers need to sign off
on their software.
Lueders described this as a “very strong
systems engineering approach,” saying NASA
needs “to make sure owners of systems actually
understand how systems operate and own that.”
The whole thing “has been a big learning
experience for us,” she said.
“We also want to make sure that in the future,
we can have this open conversation between
us and our providers, so that we can ferret
out issues without them being worried at the
end of something being put out there that
they have issues with,” she said.
NASA would also like to conduct an Organizational
Safety Assessment to locate any potential
issues or maybe shortcomings at the Boeing
workplace.
Such Face-to-face meetings are required for
such assessments, and they are not now possible
owing to the covid-19 pandemic, explained
Lueders.
In light of these findings, Boeing will perform
a second orbital test later this year at zero
price to NASA.
The review team also developed recommendations
for NASA’s Human Exploration as well as
Operations Mission Directorate, which NASA
is anticipated to incorporate into its future
programs, like the upcoming Artemis mission
to the Moon.
Trial and error is obviously part of the process—space
is difficult, after all—but Boeing definitely
needs must clean up its action.
The company came under fire earlier this year
after yet another software issue which was
recognized on its Boeing 737 Max aircraft,
which has been grounded since last year after
two deadly accidents.
