‘We Have Gaps to Fill’: Starliner Manager Admits to Wrongfully Testing Spacecraft During Mission

In December, the Starliner spaceship set off on its first test flight to the International Space Station, but docking was cancelled after the spacecraft failed to execute an orbit-insertion burn on schedule.

Boeing admitted on Friday that it had failed to adequately test its Starliner spacecraft before its maiden flight to the International Space Station (ISS) in December.

John Mulholland, vice president manager of Boeing’s Starliner program, told reporters that Boeing’s move to break up tests of its Starliner space capsule flight software into segments resulted in the craft failing to reach the space outpost.

Mulholland underscored that Boeing’s decision to test Starliner’s software in chunks was “definitely not a matter of cost”.

This artist’s concept shows Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, currently under development for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, docking to the International Space Station

According to him, it was done because engineers believed that it was logical to avoid running the entire flight at once, a process that could take more hours of testing.

Mulholland pledged “the one improvement” following the December breakdown which stipulates that the team “is to make sure that before each flight, we will run the launch-to-docking phase of the mission, and then we’ll run the docking-to-landing phase of the mission completely”.

The remarks came after it was revealed earlier this month that a collision between the Starliner crew module and its service module could have taken place if Boeing hadn’t caught the error.

“The team very quickly recoded the software, reverified it in the labs, and we were able to upload that software correction and safely complete the mission”, Mulholland told a news conference.

Boeing’s Starliner landed safely in New Mexico on 22 December after failing to dock with the ISS due to a software glitch earlier that month.

NASA, in turn, said that it is “evaluating the data received during the mission to decide if another uncrewed demonstration is required”.  The US space agency is due to announce the results of an investigation into the Starliner flight failure on 6 March.

Sourse: sputniknews.com