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Its return was successful. That's the good news, but the flight was not without incident: "Flight controllers conducted more test firings of the capsule’s thrusters following undocking; one failed to ignite. Engineers suspect the more the thrusters are fired, the hotter they become, causing protective seals to swell and obstruct the flow of propellant. They won’t be able to examine any of the parts; the section holding the thrusters was ditched just before reentry."
So they've recovered the capsule, and now they have a theory about what caused the thruster malfunction. And it's not difficult to test thrusters under high temperature as they have test chambers that can easily simulate those conditions. So we may have some answers on the thrusters forthcoming.
But we still don't know about the helium leak. Helium is kinda tricky. It's a very small molecule and can leak easily, that's why rubber helium balloons shrink so rapidly. The mylar helium balloons keep their inflation because mylar is less leaky than rubber: harder for the gas to escape.
Included in the capsule were the two astronauts' space suits and some old lab equipment.
The article has a video of the capsule undocking from the ISS which is pretty cool, seeing the thrusters firing to change its orientation.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/astronauts-left-behind-boeing-starliner-capsule-returns_n_66dbe6e5e4b01c1d24fc405c
So they've recovered the capsule, and now they have a theory about what caused the thruster malfunction. And it's not difficult to test thrusters under high temperature as they have test chambers that can easily simulate those conditions. So we may have some answers on the thrusters forthcoming.
But we still don't know about the helium leak. Helium is kinda tricky. It's a very small molecule and can leak easily, that's why rubber helium balloons shrink so rapidly. The mylar helium balloons keep their inflation because mylar is less leaky than rubber: harder for the gas to escape.
Included in the capsule were the two astronauts' space suits and some old lab equipment.
The article has a video of the capsule undocking from the ISS which is pretty cool, seeing the thrusters firing to change its orientation.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/astronauts-left-behind-boeing-starliner-capsule-returns_n_66dbe6e5e4b01c1d24fc405c
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Date: 2024-09-07 08:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-07 11:30 pm (UTC)Always gotta be issues. :o
Hugs, Jon
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Date: 2024-09-08 03:00 am (UTC)Most spaceflights have minor problems, but anything Boing flies these days is always going to be under a microscope.
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Date: 2024-09-08 01:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-09 11:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-10 12:01 am (UTC)Ditto! I read today that at some point in the descent the capsule had a complete failure in either communications or control! It definitely was no where near as good as it should have been. At least one bad thruster - not the same as the helium thrusters that were previously problematic - plus this other failure! The astronauts probably would have gotten home safely, but there were simply too many unknowns, as demonstrated.