Cosmic Log
Is Boeing thinking about unloading some of its space projects? Is Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture a potential buyer? And in light of former President Donald Trump’s increasingly close relationship with SpaceX founder Elon Musk, how are Bezos and Blue Origin reaching out to the GOP candidate?
Such speculation is fueled by several reports about space-related (and Bezos-related) developments over just the past couple of days.
It wasn’t perfect, but the propulsion system that NASA worried about did its job today as Boeing’s Starliner space capsule made an uncrewed descent from the International Space Station back down to Earth.
The gumdrop-shaped spacecraft, christened Calypso, floated down to a parachute-assisted, airbag-cushioned touchdown at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico. “Starliner is back on Earth,” Boeing commentator Lauren Brennecke said.
Starliner’s first crewed trip to the space station was supposed to last only about a week, but when the capsule made its approach for docking on June 6, five thrusters out of a set of 28 malfunctioned. Four of the thrusters were reactivated, and NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams executed a successful docking. But concerns about the thrusters — and about a string of helium leaks in the propulsion pressurization system — sparked weeks of troubleshooting by NASA and Boeing.
Engineers decided that they could cope with the helium leaks, but the thruster problem was a bigger concern. Tests determined that the propulsion system’s performance was degraded by overheating that exceeded design specifications.
Two weeks ago, NASA said the uncertainties surrounding the system’s performance were too great to risk having Williams and Wilmore ride back to Earth on Starliner. Instead, the astronauts were told to remain on the station for months longer than originally planned.
To accommodate the personnel shift, NASA reduced the size of the next scheduled crew, known as Crew-9, from four to two spacefliers. That crew is due to go into orbit in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on Sept. 24. Williams and Wilmore will join Crew-9 and return to Earth in the SpaceX capsule next February.
NASA has decided it’s too risky to have Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft return to Earth from the International Space Station with its two crew members, and so those astronauts will extend their stay by several months and come back on a SpaceX Dragon capsule instead. Starliner, which has been in the midst of its first crewed flight after years of delay, will be reprogrammed to make an uncrewed departure from the space station next month.
Top mission managers said today that they decided unanimously to make a dramatic change in what was originally expected to be a test flight lasting only a couple of weeks. They said there was too much uncertainty surrounding the thruster problems that cropped up during Starliner’s trip to the space station in early June.
“All of us really wanted to complete the test flight with crew, and I think unanimously we’re disappointed not to be able to do that,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Boeing “worked hard” to address questions about the thruster system, but in the end, the space agency took what it considered to be the safer course. He said NASA learned its lessons from “mistakes done in the past,” including safety lapses that led to space shuttle disasters in 1986 and 2003.
“Our core value is safety, and it is our North Star,” Nelson said.
A federal judge in Seattle has sided with Boeing and is throwing out a jury verdict that called for the aerospace giant to pay $72 million to Zunum Aero, a Seattle-area aviation startup it once supported.
In an statement emailed to me after the judge made his ruling, Boeing said it was “grateful for the court’s careful and thorough consideration of all the evidence at trial to reach this decision.”
Zunum took a different view: “We are disappointed by the court’s decision to overturn the jury’s carefully considered and well-supported verdict,” the Bothell, Wash-based company said in an emailed statement. “We intend to appeal the court’s order and to reinstate the jury’s verdict.”
Zunum’s goal was to develop hybrid electric airplanes that it said could reinvigorate regional air transport. In 2017, the company forged a partnership with Boeing, and Boeing made $9 million in loans to Zunum. But the startup wasn’t able to gain traction and ended up suspending operations in 2019.
In its lawsuit, Zunum alleged that Boeing misappropriated its trade secrets and interfered with its efforts to bring in more investment from companies associated with Safran, a different aerospace company. At the end of an eight-day trial in May, a nine-member jury backed most of Zunum’s claims — but after the verdict, District Judge James Robart reviewed the case in response to Boeing’s post-trial challenges.
Robart’s ruling, issued today, sided with Boeing’s challenges. The judge wrote that Zunum didn’t provide sufficient evidence that the pieces of information it shared with Boeing about its technology could truly be considered trade secrets. He also agreed with Boeing that Zunum “failed to provide substantial evidence that Zunum had a valid business expectancy with Safran,” and did not suffer harm due to any interference from Boeing.
Continuing concerns about the thruster system on Boeing’s Starliner space capsule may lead NASA to decide against letting astronauts take the craft back down to Earth from the International Space Station, mission managers said today.
In such a scenario, the two astronauts who rode to the ISS in Starliner for the capsule’s first crewed test mission in June would fly back down in a SpaceX Dragon capsule next February.
“We haven’t approved this plan,” Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, told journalists during a teleconference. “In other words, we’ve done all the work to make sure this plan is there.”
Going ahead with the contingency plan would require shuffling arrangements for the next crew that’s due to take a Dragon to the ISS, known as Crew-9.
That crew would be cut back from four to two astronauts. Starliner’s test pilots, Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, would remain on the station for Crew-9’s tour of duty and return to Earth with Crew-9 as part of the regular rotation.
This week NASA pushed back Crew-9’s scheduled launch to no earlier than Sept. 24 to accommodate potential changes. Because of the parking arrangements at the station, the Starliner capsule would have to undock from the station before the Crew-9 launch and make an uncrewed, robotically controlled descent and landing.
Opening up a new chapter in its century-long history, Boeing says its next CEO and president will be Kelly Ortberg, a 64-year-old aerospace executive who previously held the CEO post at Rockwell Collins, now a subsidiary of RTX.
Citing an unidentified source, The Seattle Times reported that Ortberg will be based in Seattle, the city where Boeing was founded. That suggests there’s a chance that Boeing’s headquarters will move back to Seattle — 23 years after the base of operations was moved to Chicago, and two years after it was moved again to Arlington, Va.
Ortberg will take the helm on Aug. 8 after a trying five years for the aerospace giant. Fatal crashes of Boeing’s 737 MAX jets in 2018 and 2019 led to a worldwide grounding of the plane, and eventually to the firing of then-CEO Dennis Muilenburg. His successor, David Calhoun, was charged not only with getting the MAX back in service, but also with repairing Boeing’s tarnished image and weathering a new set of supply-chain challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although the 737 MAX is flying again, Calhoun’s efforts fell short. A fresh controversy arose this January when a door plug flew off an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX in flight. In May, Calhoun announced his intent to retire.
Today Boeing posted a loss of $1.4 billion for the second quarter, compared with a loss of $149 million a year earlier. Boeing’s losses have added up to more than $25 billion since the start of 2019.
Boeing’s Starliner capsule and its two-person NASA crew arrived at the International Space Station today after mission managers coped with some post-launch glitches involving the spacecraft’s propulsion system.
“Today’s docking, I think, was challenging,” Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, told reporters after Starliner’s arrival. “We had a few things we had to work through as a team.”
One of the glitches had to do with the thrusters that are used to maneuver the gumdrop-shaped capsule in orbit. Five of the 28 thrusters initially malfunctioned — which forced NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams to put their final approach to the station on hold for more than an hour.
Four of the balky thrusters were successfully reactivated, clearing the way for the docking procedure to resume.
Two NASA astronauts were sent into space today to begin the first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, making a shakedown cruise to the International Space Station and back after years of costly setbacks and two scrubbed countdowns.
United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 10:52 a.m. ET (7:52 a.m. PT), sending Starliner and its crew — NASA’s Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams — to the International Space Station.
“Let’s get going,” Wilmore told Mission Control just before launch. “Let’s put some fire in this rocket.”
The Atlas V rose smoothly into a mostly sunny sky, and within minutes, the gumdrop-shaped capsule separated from the rocket’s Centaur upper stage to continue its rise to orbit.
For the second time in a month, the first crewed launch of Boeing’s Starliner space capsule to the International Space Station was called off while the crew members were in their seats, waiting for liftoff.
The hold was automatically triggered by the launch-pad computer system that manages the final minutes of the countdown for Starliner’s launch vehicle, an Atlas V rocket provided by United Launch Alliance.
The ground launch sequencer forced an end to today’s launch attempt at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida with just three minutes and 50 seconds remaining in the countdown. Mission managers started investigating what triggered the alarm even as the launch pad team began the process of helping NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams out of the capsule.
United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno said the automated launch sequencer triggered an alarm because a circuit card on one of three redundant computer racks came up about six seconds more slowly than the other two. That particular card controls activities that free up the rocket for liftoff.
“For that system, we do require all three systems to be running. … Two came up normally. The third one came up, but it was slow to come up,” Bruno said at a news briefing. “That tripped a red line that created an automatic hold.”
The NASA-ULA-Boeing team said it would pass up a launch opportunity on June 2 to give engineers more time to assess the situation. The computer problem could be due to faulty hardware, which would be relatively simple to swap out, or it could be a more complex issue involving network connections between the computers.
A federal jury in Seattle says Boeing owes an unsuccessful electric-aviation startup called Zunum Aero $72 million for misappropriating trade secrets and interfering with its business plans.
Some of that amount could be tripled if the judge determines that the misappropriation was willful and malicious.
“Zunum Aero’s founders and other shareholders are pleased that the company had the opportunity to prove its case, and that the jury agreed,” Scott Danner of the law firm Holwell Shuster & Goldberg, lead counsel for Zunum, said in a statement. “After years of fighting, the jury’s verdict is a tremendous vindication.”
Boeing said it would challenge the judgment. “Boeing respectfully disagrees with the jury’s verdict, which is not supported by the law or the facts,” the company said.