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Listen, I’m tired of talking about Boeing’s Starliner, too, but the spacecraft hasn’t even made it home yet. Questions are mounting I’m not surprised that people are starting to seriously question whether Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams will return to Earth on the Starliner (or whether the SpaceX Dragon will be needed as an emergency return vehicle).
According to Eric Berger at Ars, one “informed source” estimated there was a better than 50-50 chance the crew would return on the Dragon; another said it was “highly likely” NASA would use SpaceX’s vehicle.
If so, it’s hard to see a future for the Starliner program — and that’s despite the fact that Boeing has spent about $1.6 billion on the program, in addition to the $4.2 billion contract NASA awarded it to develop the capsule.
Launch of the week
SpaceX launched Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station this week, marking Northrop’s 21st commercial resupply mission for NASA. NASA has no NASA has prepared extra spacesuits for Wilmore and Williams, which they will need if they return aboard Dragon, agency officials said during a news conference Friday.
Although the launch went as planned, NASA’s mission control center He apparently told the astronauts on the station Hours later, the agency issued a statement saying that Sinus had failed to execute its propulsion burn “due to a delay in entering the burn sequence.” But the agency added that “Northrop Grumman engineers are working on a new burn and trajectory plan” to allow the spacecraft to arrive as planned at 3:10 a.m. EDT on Aug. 7.
Click on the link to Rewatch the launch.
I was excited to see FAST’s plans to create the first private microgravity laboratory in low Earth orbit. The company’s Haven-1 lab will host Redwire Space and the European space biotechnology company EUREE, and no doubt others, given the high demand for research aboard the ISS. More science in space = a win for humanity.
This Week in Space History
On August 6, 2012, the Curiosity rover touched down on Mars after a nearly year-long journey from Earth. Enjoy these amazing shots of Mission Control as Curiosity made its final descent to the planet. Did you cry? I bet I did.