NASA will be launching a crew atop a Falcon 9 in the coming weeks as the SpaceX workhorse returned to flight with three Starlink launches over the weekend.
Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, said that the plan was to launch no earlier than August 18, although the launch window stretched into early September. “That’s really driven by a pad turnaround for the Europa Clipper mission,” he said.
The date is also driven by managers having a plan and date to bring back the crew of the Boeing Starliner, which has been enjoying an extended stay at the International Space Station (ISS) while engineers work to understand the issues encountered during the test flight.
Astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore blasted off for a short trip on the Starliner on June 5, arriving at the ISS on June 6 for what was meant to be an eight-day mission. Crew-8, meanwhile, including NASA ‘nauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, have been on the space station since March conducting scientific research including a study of brain organoids and another on plant growth.
Stich said: “The overall sequence is to undock and bring Butch [Wilmore] and Suni [Williams] home on Starliner, and then go launch the Crew-9 mission, and then do the direct handover, and bring Crew-8 home.”
Stich also addressed the upper-stage mishap experienced by SpaceX and said that a second hot-fire was planned to check out the modifications made following the incident, which left a payload of Starlink satellites in the wrong orbit after the second-stage engine failed due to a liquid oxygen leak.
He later confirmed that a “rigorous certification” of the changes would be performed, and the modifications baselined for Crew-9.
Stich also said Crew-10 would be launched in February 2025 “to give a little bit more time for Starliner to complete the mods after CFT [Crew Flight Test] so Starliner-1 will moved into the August slot next year.”
The confirmation that it will be at least a year before Boeing’s Starliner will fly again is disappointing, but both inevitable and prudent considering the helium leaks and thruster issues that have plagued the test flight.
Sarah Walker, Dragon Mission Management director at SpaceX, noted the cause of the mishap – a cracked sense line that led to excessive cooling of the engine components on the stage, particularly those associated with the delivery of ignition fluid to the engine. Walker went on to explain that the line was redundant and could simply be removed – a design change that has already been tested at the company’s McGregor facility.
Walker also confirmed that SpaceX would be switching Dragon recovery operations to the dUS West Coast after parts of the spacecraft’s trunk repeatedly survive reentry and hit the ground.
The change will require that Dragon’s deorbit burn is performed before the trunk is jettisoned, and whatever survives of the trunk will then splash down uprange of the spacecraft off the coast of California. ®
