NASA astronauts revealed that the Boeing Starliner came dangerously close to failing its docking attempt at the International Space Station.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams described the moments before the Boeing Starliner docked to Ars Technica, revealing that they almost had to abort the docking attempt on June 5, 2024.
Wilmore said that as the Starliner approached the International Space Station, they lost the first thruster. As the Starliner got closer to the space station, a second thruster was also lost. Typically, Wilmore said, these kinds of events would trigger an abortion of the docking attempt. According to Wilmore, NASA waived the flight rules to allow the mission to continue.
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“And this is the part I’m sure you haven’t heard. We lost the fourth thruster. Now we’ve lost [Six degrees of freedom] control. We can’t maneuver forward. I still have control, supposedly, on all the other axes. But I’m thinking, the F-18 is a fly-by-wire. You put control into the stick, and the throttle, and it sends the signal to the computer. The computer goes, ‘OK, he wants to do that, let’s throw that out aileron a bit. Let’s throw that stabilizer a bit. Let’s pull the rudder there.’ And it’s going to maintain balanced flight. I have not even had a reason to think, how does Starliner do this, to maintain a balance?” Wilmore said.
While the pair attempted to dock, Williams said there was “a lot of unsaid communication.”
“Hey, this is a very precarious situation we’re in,” Williams said. “I think both of us overwhelmingly felt like it would be really nice to dock to that space station that’s right in front of us. We knew that they [Mission Control] were working really hard to be able to keep communication with us, and then be able to send commands. We were both thinking, what if we lose communication with the ground?”
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Wilmore remembered a point in the docking process when his optimism about aborting the mission and returning to Earth was dwindling.
“I don’t know that we can come back to Earth at that point. I don’t know if we can. And matter of fact, I’m thinking we probably can’t. So there we are, loss of 6DOF control, four aft thrusters down, and I’m visualizing orbital mechanics,” Wilmore said.
Eventually, NASA Mission Control decided to take control of the spacecraft for its final approach to the space station after it recovered the failed thrusters.
“Oh, phew, let’s just take a breather and try to understand what happened,” Williams remembered thinking when the Starliner docked.
While the Starliner returned to Earth on Sept. 7, 2024, it was without astronauts inside in order to minimize risks. The astronauts finished their unexpected 9-month trip to the space station on March 18, when they returned to Earth in a SpaceX Crew Dragon Capsule.
