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Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule won’t dock with Space Station as planned after missing target orbit
When the Starliner capsule was supposed to light up its own engines and propel itself to its target orbit, the requisite burn didn’t happen. The Starliner is in a stable orbit, but it is no longer capable of reaching the International Space Station as planned. (techcrunch.com) Más...
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- This was the first test of a supposedly Autonomous vehicle. By the time ground controllers found that things were amiss, too much maneuvering fuel had been burnt by errant software. Starliner FAILS to accomplish mission to rendezvous with Space Station. IMHO, there needs to be a simpler, quicker method for Ground based controller to override quickly. Think of it as a Space Shuttle-like dashboard to take control, run by a trained operator ON THE GROUND
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/something-went-wrong-with-the-starliner-spacecrafts-first-flight/
“When ground-based controllers realized the problem, they immediately sent a command to begin the orbital insertion burn, but due to a communications problem—which could have been a gap in coverage of NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System or some spacecraft error—those commands were not received right away by Starliner. So it continued to expend fuel to maintain a precise attitude.”
I would hope that NASA has continuous communications capability for a vehicle intended to be crewed in the future. Even for a uncrewed test as critical as this one, that would seem to be a requirement.
“When ground-based controllers realized the problem, they immediately sent a command to begin the orbital insertion burn, but due to a communications problem—which could have been a gap in coverage of NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System or some spacecraft error—those commands were not received right away by Starliner. So it continued to expend fuel to maintain a precise attitude.”
I would hope that NASA has continuous communications capability for a vehicle intended to be crewed in the future. Even for a uncrewed test as critical as this one, that would seem to be a requirement.
It appears that the attitude control system was entirely dependent on the accuracy of the Mission Elapsed Timer - which constituted a single point of failure. As originally designed, the 737MAX MCAS was entirely dependent on the accuracy of a single Angle of Attack sensor - another case of a system designed with a single point of failure. Don't Boeing's engineers understand the importance of redundancy in safety critical systems?
