Something many of us weren’t convinced was actually going to happen finally happened – Boeing successfully sent their CST-100 Starliner to the International Space Station (ISS) and back as part of their Orbital Flight Test 2, or OFT-2, mission.

For those of you who don’t remember, OFT-1 was not the most successful mission, and OFT-2 had a few less than stellar early attempts at liftoff.

Back in December 2019, OFT-1 was a “high visibility close call” due to numerous issues with everything from the flight software to reaction control thrusters. It was unable to dock to the ISS.

After that spacecraft limped home, Boeing said they would do an OFT-2. It had the usual delays before finally rolling out to the pad. The first real launch attempt for that was in August 2021, but it was called off six hours before launch due to valve problems. Half of the valves that controlled the reaction control thrusters were corroded shut. The root cause: water intrusion. Someone didn’t take into consideration humidity with a spacecraft launched from Florida. The fix for this problem delayed the launch from August 2021 to May 2022.

And then there were the issues you just have to laugh at, like the protective window cover that yote off as they drove the capsule down the street.

Somehow, despite all these issues, OFT-2 managed to lift off on May 19, 2022.

While the craft did lift off, it was not without issues that had Pamela, who is not here so I can say this, totally shaking her head. For instance, the cooling loop got a bit too cold and iced up – turns out that if you don’t have four living, breathing things in the capsule producing heat, your cooling loop needs to be adjusted down.

Also, two of the three thrusters on one ‘doghouse’ of thrusters failed in the first hour of the flight, but the other thrusters in the three other ‘doghouses’ were able to compensate.

As the capsule got closer to the ISS and prepared to cross the imaginary boundary of the 200-meter ‘Keep Out Sphere’, it then had to pause for an extended period of time while engineers worked to troubleshoot an issue with the soft capture ring on the spacecraft’s NASA Docking System.

That ring is the three blades that extend out of the port and help roughly align and manage the loads when it contacts the station’s docking port. It also corrects for slight misalignments. The nature of the issue was not clear, but retracting and extending the soft capture ring fixed the issue and Starliner proceeded further in.

But then, Starliner had to pause again because lighting conditions weren’t sufficient to actually dock. For over an hour, the capsule held station just ninety meters away from the docking port — so close and so very, very far.

Eventually, Starliner was able to dock, and here we do have a moment of goodness and light. Boeing left the astronauts a neat surprise: the spacecraft’s zero-gravity indicator was a plush Jebediah Kerman, from the video game Kerbal Space Program. Jebediah got lots of positive feedback from space nerds across the social internet – something Boeing sorely needed with all of the issues and delays encountered by this spacecraft.

I have to admit that I’ve got some real mixed feels about Jebediah being the zero-g indicator. At a certain level, my experience with KSP isn’t all that different from Boeing’s with Starliner. Sometimes, you succeed in spite of serious design and operational issues, and you learn from your mistakes.

I hope Boeing learned.

Mostly, I’m just unsurprised to see a defense contractor pander to space nerds.

Still, I admit that I found where to get one of the plushies and bought one myself. I am not immune to consumerism, particularly when cute things are involved. Just ask TinyIntern, who sends me links to opossum stuff all the time.

Starliner stayed at the ISS for several days, demonstrating that it can stay powered down attached to the station like it will need to do for a six-month operational mission.

Starliner successfully returned to Earth the evening of Wednesday, May 25, carrying some cargo back to White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Like the first mission, reentry and the parachute deployments were nominal. Among the cargo on return were some empty gas canisters used for the station’s atmosphere.

Like the Soyuz, Starliner returns to a landing on solid ground, but instead of the small rockets used on the Soyuz and New Shepard, Starliner uses airbags for the final touchdown.

Assuming the Data Review goes well, and all indications are that it will, Starliner will fly its Crew Flight Test later this year, with its first operational mission in 2023. There are finally two U.S. spacecraft capable of sending crew to and from the ISS, the goal of the Commercial Crew Program started over a decade ago.

And if things don’t go well for the Data Review, there is another spacecraft getting ready to fly: the Dream Chaser. Expect to hear more on that little space plane as 2023 approaches.

More Information

Boeing press release

Station Crew Opens Boeing Starliner Hatch, Enters Spacecraft (NASA)

NASA press release