July 3rd, Starliner crew enters fourth week on orbit while teams prepare for ground testing
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams climbed into Starliner at the International Space Station and worked with Boeing flight controllers and engineers on Tuesday, July 2, during power up of the spacecraft.
The teams on-console in NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston and Boeing’s Mission Control Center at Kennedy Space Center checked out various systems of the spacecraft with the crew, including repressurizing the propellant manifolds. They also conducted mission data loads, or MDLs, which are files for the spacecraft’s computer to understand current inertial and relative navigation states, Earth rotation, and thermal conditioning on thrusters used during Starliner’s return, and more.
“We updated some products on board to support the continued docked duration through the month of July and through the higher positive beta periods we are approaching,” said Chloe Mehring, the Starliner flight director who coordinated the power-up actions with Wilmore and Williams. “Starliner is healthy and no anomalies were written against the spacecraft.”
Additional Operational Checkout Capabilities, or OCCs, that were added during Tuesday’s testing included tablet and procedure updates. Camera and tablet batteries were also charged while the spacecraft was fully powered up.
At the last few minutes the astronauts’ nerves are beginning to show. Photo captured on Saturday, June 1, by Satnews from ULA video stream.
Canadian Space Agency astronaut Josh Kutryk, the CAPCOM or capsule communicator, who will fly on Starliner-1 following CFT, was also on console working with the crew. Kutryk updated crew toward end of power up that transfer of the MDLs were successful and all software updates are in a good configuration.
“Good news. Great work. Copy all,” Wilmore replied over the ISS Space-to-Ground loop.
That work took place as teams at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico prepared for Starliner’s Reaction Control System, or RCS, thruster testing. An acceptance test, which is standard for all new thrusters as a quality check and to gather baseline performance data, is starting today, July 3. This thruster was planned for a future Starliner mission.
Beginning next week, teams will run the thruster through similar conditions that Starliner experienced after launch on the way to the space station. The tests will include replicating the phase of the Crew Flight Test from launch to docking. Then tests will be performed to replicate what thrusters will experience from undocking to landing.
“We really want to understand the thruster and how we use it in flight,” said Dan Niedermaier, the lead Boeing engineer for the thruster testing. “We will learn a lot from these thruster firings that will be valuable for the remainder of the Crew Flight Test and future missions.”
Wilmore and Williams have remained busy assisting the space station crew with organizing stowage on orbiting laboratory. Earlier this week, Wilmore disassembled an empty NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer in the Japanese Experiment Module in preparation of upcoming NanoRacks missions. He also prepped and viewed samples for Moon Microscope, a demonstration that allows flight surgeons on Earth to diagnose illnesses and could provide diagnostic capabilities for crews on future missions to the Moon and Mars. Williams conducted some routine orbital plumbing, then audited U.S. stowage items housed inside the Zarya module. Go here to see more work the two performed Tuesday and today.
The Crew Flight Test astronauts will also provide an update on their mission and stay at the ISS during a news conference at 11 a.m. ET on Wednesday, July 10. Media interested in participating should RSVP by 5 p.m. Tuesday, July 9, and can learn how here.
By Boeing