Conferencia de la NASA sobre la vuelta del Boeing Starliner I DIRECTO

do we still call it CF after Starliner comes home in terms of BU and Sunny's Mission or they part of expedition 7172 Etc and then the second one is can you talk a little bit about what you're going to be doing for evaluation after uh Starliner returns for the first few weeks thanks yeah I would say they were part of the crude flight test right um this this vehicle and AD mission was very important to us and so that s and sunny will always be part of the crude flight test we get the vehicle back uh we'll go through a couple months of uh postf flight analysis of the trajectory how the posters perform during the Final Phase of flight and then we're also already working hand in hand with Boeing to look at modifications uh to the system is there ways that we can fly the vehicle differently do we need to do some more Thruster testing out at wh Sands to to fill in some of the gaps that we had perhaps in qualification so all that's going to start taking place and there there team to uh what we do to get the vehicle fully certified in the future we'll now go to a question here in the room should we yes Mark with Aviation week and space technology thank you for the second question I wonder if you could go into a little more detail about what you've done to prepare um the crew8 Dragon for but and sunny to join the the U who launched on it in case there was some emergency that you had to leave the space station yeah so what we done is we' configured in Thea on create what I would call temporary seat so we've used some of the items on the space station to build a temporary seat for Butch and sunny um as you have seen for launch and Starliner or even Dragon the crew needs to have their feet in a certain location their knees bent and so we have this temporary seat configured for but and sunny it has a number of straps associated with that that goes around them and secures them in place for the should we ever need to use it we don't intend to ever use it but it would be some extreme contingency where we had to get away from station quickly where they could use that um we've analyzed that from air flow perspective we got good air flow down there we know that they can get the air they need we practiced handing rals for communication should we need that we've also analyed it for the landing and parachute event and the loads on the body are acceptable these temporary seats that we've configured uh Jus ABC News I think this is for Dana you've had really many long duration missions Scott Kelly Mark Peggy I mean a number of people Christina how do you support those asot families on the ground for these long duration missions what's you've got a good program here we are very fortunate that we've got a great um network of support for our crew members um you know their families are very actively engaged in the mission they follow along with the mission whether it's coming to watch Dynamic activities like a docking undocking you know they'll come and join us um in the viewing room in Mission Control I think some of the really important touch points in addition to the crews having as you know they've got phones that they can use to call down and talk to their family but we have so much experience with previous crew members who have flown we have really good support network both in the crew office and in the operations area supporting our crew and we also have other um behavioral Heth and other great support assets both for our crew on board and for all of our family members so pretty big support they're part of the massive family we'll take our next question now from our phone Bridge Kristen fer with CNN hi there thanks so much for do this my questions are for Anthony Anthony youal after ster hased what are things other than weather that could lead to a decision to delay starer return you could through maybe some of those things on the technical side um I think that'd be helpful and then finally you know worst scenario let's just say imers that situation thanks I'll take your second question first um as Steve alluded to there are Springs that are currently charged up and ready to go on the starer side of the do and so as soon as the hooks relas and allow the vehicles to have motion those Springs are going to push Starliner away from ISS and in the event that thrusters for some reason not we do have analysis that shows that the vehicle is going to push away from station uh and not have any sort of collision concerns uh so we're good there and we of course expect those clusters to work for that breakout burn in terms of the types of things we're looking at in the go no go ahead of the undock Starliner we got to make sure that the entire ISS uh and all of its appendages and systems are in a good State uh and ready to support the backing away of Starliner of ensuring that we have good communication between ground the ground teams the ISS the Starliner the tedris all of those sorts of things that we want to make sure are good to go and we have guidance in these rules that say uh which which types of things we can live without versus which things we would actually stop the undocking a long rule uh but our systems experts are very good at pursing through that data and being able to quickly uh determine with all of their knowledge as a certified play controller whether their systems are ready to support or if we need to talk about it'll to Joey hey thank you quick one for Dana there's a lot of interest in how the astronauts are doing an ISS and you had mentioned they are trained and well prepared and they're going to be doing normal routine like normal routine exercises for longer Mission can you just kind of quickly go into what that is specifically and whether any other cargo missions are going to be needed to specifically accommodate them and that in theek after sters you guys potential modific system more tting and filling in gaps in qualific what are those gaps in starers qualifications that you guys would want to fill thanks see start the first one um let's see since Butch and sunny have been on board and they were extended they already started participating and really helping us out on board station they've done over 42 experiments may actually be more than that by now that was when I checked last week they had over a 100 hours between the two of them helping us on board with science and research and so I would say that the the change between the short duration Mission and an expedition has been a lot more gradual than you might imagine just because they've been shipping in and helping along the way um they are doing you know the normal exercise regiments that have a high degree of both cardiovascular um work as well as um resistance training so they're doing the standard amount that we members do at this point so both of those have been more gradual changes and so they're actually pretty shifted over in terms of daily routines with our Expedition crew you asked about manifest items you know when we first sent them up um they were they were borrowing a lot of our generic clothing and some of the generic choices that we have on board we have switched some of those things out when we sent up the Northman 21 flight we put a lot of which in specific is what we call them on board the vehicle so they actually have all of the standard Expedition gear at this point than any other member would be able to select we've got another cargo vehicle coming up SpaceX 31 we'll send up anything else that uh that they need for the the back end half of their mission on that flight and let's see in terms of qualification and things we need to do after the flight um the first thing you know in the helium system obviously we have a number of helium leaks we think these are related to a seal in the Thruster flange itself that seal when it's exposed to oxidizer which is the vapor from the propellant one of the oxidizer propellants we think that maybe it's causing a little degradation in that seal so one of one of the things we're looking at is a different material on the seal and maybe a different slightly enlarged seal to make that seal better so that is with the helium leaks so that's one thing that we'll be working on and then the second thing really is on the thrusters clearly the way we fire the thrusters causes the Thruster to overheat and causes this poet on the Teflon poet on the oxide to swell and so we need to go understand what kinds of pulses in particular cause that swelling the number of pulses the the pulse train itself and what temperatures it gets to uh on the Fuster itself and then how do we then tell the vehicle not to fire the cluster in that manner to cause the extra heating we also want to understand in the dog itself the dock house is trapping heat in in a way that perhaps we didn't understand pre-light and so is there anything we can do inside the dock house to to not trap so much heat and not expose the thrusters to the additional heating from not only their owning but when for example the fires there's heat that crosses over into the thrusters as well so those are some of the things we'll be working get Brown news good afternoon thanks for doing this my question is you know what what you do either as your teams or as an agency to decide orid after St returns to go forwarding to go forward to try to have a successful fully Soup To Nuts you know human flight with Starliner you know how how do those conversations go what are you looking and you know what what would be acceptable to you yeah I'll start and see if Dana has anything to add I mean you know many parts of the flight went extremely well Starliner is a is a great spacecraft we know that it performs well the life support system is performing very well in fact we have extra oxygen we're going to transfer over the next 24s s about 20 pounds of oxygen to the International Space Station to use that oxygen so many things on the vehicle are working really well what we really need to go do is look at the things that that didn't perform the way we expected like I talked about the helium leaks can we go fix those leaks test those on the ground and have confidence to move forward and fly again and the same thing with the thrusters we know the thrusters are working well when we don't command them in a that overs them and gets the to SW on the we never saw anyad at all so we know that the Thruster is a is a viable Thruster it's a good component how we not overheat it um you know and we just have to go look system by system as we move forward toward certification uh hand in hand with Boeing team we have a process that we understand very well and we'll start to work on that as soon as the comes back I'll take our next question from Jeff B with space news follow up on earlier question um just mentioned the thrusters are you thrusters are us to address the overa isses thrusters themselveses to prevent the over in the first place thanks yeah I would say we haven't really rolled anything out yet but an easier fix would be to not change the Thruster design itself but to try to understand the kinds of pulses we can get into where once you pulse it a number of times after it stops pulsing then the heat will soak back into the Thruster and cause the PO SW and so the easiest thing to do is figure out how do we lower the temperature the Fuster is operating at and maybe not firing it fire in a manner that causes it to to have this overheating phenomenon that's really the primary thing that we're focused on based on what we learned at White Sands based on what we've learned in Flight we'll go to our next question Anthony with Spectrum news hello thank you all so much for taking time to answer questions today question to happen sometime next year um how will what happen with this test impact that and going forward how will the certification process change Happ with this Mission thank you yeah as we' talked about before we were planning one point a flight in February of 2025 we've moved that out to the August time frame already really what we need to do now we've been entirely focused this summer on understanding what is happening on orbit trying to decide can we bring the crew back or not once we decided UNCW now how do we safely the vehicle undocked and landed at Whit sand space Harbor I think what we need to do now is really lay out the overall plan which we have not had time to do we haven't because the teams have been so focused on this flight laying out that overall search strategy the overall amount of work we've got to go do and then when we do that we'll have a better understanding of when can we certify the vehicle and when can we resume flights we'll take our next question from Micah maidenberg with the Wall Street Journal hey goodno Dan you give a read on what they said or if you haven't what have they communicated an answer recently about their new Mission and there was some discuss on the last briefing about disappoint you know at Nasa about not being able to finish CF with crew have you heard any of that from either astronaut thanks a lot um I've had some email exchanges with the crew and um they're happy that we made a decision I think one of the challenges for them is is kind of waiting and they've been listening to a lot of discussions in fact they actually tie into a lot of Steve boards and so they're following along they're very much engaged asking questions I think they're happy that a decision was made and they understand the the plan forward um in the communications with me they're kind of thankful and ready to to move forward um I think Joe aaba said it best when he said you know they flew as test pilots they're ready to execute whatever Mission we put in front of them uh they have confidence in the team if we would have decided to bring them home they'd be ready to come home but we decided to leave them on board to join the Expedition and do the work on board station and so they're ready to go and execute that if you have anything you want to yeah I haven't spoken to them than a few emails back and forth and they seem like they're in good spirits I would say our team um you know is very resilient and I I've seen the team uh since we made the decision uh a little bit more than 10 days ago uh focused now on bringing the vehicle back I mean that's what these individuals do and human space flight they are passionate about their jobs they understand the importance now of of moving on and getting the vehicle back uh and getting the vehicle back safely and making sure that the changes we to the have been accommodated we've changed a few procedures on how the cockpit got to be configured are those changes the correct ones looking back on what we did for2 the changes in the using this breakout sequence and are we we have all that right monitoring the weather and and now they're kind of into that normal Rhythm I would say of getting the the vehicle powered up and and ready to come home and and you know I've seen a bit of a shift in in Attitude um and then uh you know we're ready to go execute now and that's what we're focused on yeah now underscore you know on the flight operation side we're talking with but and sunny and all of the crew all of the time uh and their mission focus is really admirable you know they are not just passengers on this vehicle they're a part of the team uh they were asking good questions and providing excellent context as we were trying to figure out what was going on with Starline you heard from but last month talking about the felt on the first day how it flew like a dream and how it felt a little sluggish on the second day we get a lot of telemetry and a lot of camera views and all sorts of data in human space flight but the data you get from talking to a human about what they're experiencing can give you some Contex about what the data is sh you and so they've been extremely valuable members of this team and so I would say that their mission Focus has been though it's changed with the uh the change in their are just as dedicated for the success of human space flight going forward to robt Suiter Su stes in the ofy evacuation crew member would wear that suit those are good questions Robert the two the two Boe suits will return with Starliner so those suits that but and sunny wore for the launch day and on the way to space station will return we do have one suit on orbit right now that fits sunny and she's tried that suit on and it fits well that's a SpaceX suit the suits so the the Starliner suits would not work in dragon and vice versa so when we set up the contract we let each the contractors Define their own suits and their own interface and then we're sending up a suit for Butch that will fly up on crew n and so have a suit way isig forcy and sunny riding on the cargo pallet and those temporary seats that I described that's an unsuited configuration that there's no space suits that work there the dragon configured to to support four four suits four people with suits and so in a tiary situation we would not have suits for and until crew gets there and then crew it becomes a normal a normal vehicle where they would have suits and seats and and they're part of that that crew n crew returning we'll take a question from AV I have mentioned 20 25 minutes leave how much under nomal depart and mentioned off on a CO or another one and just last is there any reason a picture of the tempor in okay I think there was three questions there Anthony May best to answer the first one I don't remember how long the original undock sequence took to get out of the ellipsoid maybe Anthony might remember yeah to get out of the ID I think it's it's under an hour but that's there's going to be a plus or minus on that um so but I it's around that time frame if I'm remembering correctly and and then second question was relative to the the thrusters and hot ties the team is still analyzing which thrusters they would like to Hot Fire I suspect they will choose to Hot Fire some of the app thrusters uh they may choose toot fire the B1 A3 Thruster just to see what what we saw is you know we did two do hot tires one about 10 days after docking and one a couple months later and we saw that uh receded quite a bit and so the trusters had a lot more trust so the purpose of the hot tis will be to see what has changed in the thrusters in the time frame um since then in fact B1 A3 we never hot TI at all and then also to check the thrusters the for thrusters they may hot fire a few of those and that will be the purpose of that was to see after you undock and you fire for a little while did we see anything in terms of degradation and Trust there and then the app ones just to collect a little bit more data on those thrusters it really all is is oriented toward learning more about the thrusters and then what can we do to mitigate the Heat and the thrusters in the future I'll take a question now from Jim florid hi everybody foring my question will there be instrumentation onard to record what the crew would have experienced if they had been onard during the return of the starer thank you yeah good good question absolutely there is a wide range of instrumentation on the vehicle in particular on the seats there are accelerometers that measure uh the forces that the crew would feel and so we'll have that data we a wealth of data on the spacecraft itself the Telemetry system pressures temperatures structural measurements across the vehicle so we're going to get a lot of data on the return in particular even inside the crew cabin we can get a lot of data that will help us for the next slide as well we'll go now to a question from AFP so much for do this I just wanted to know maybe first of all I think it was do you have of catastrophe just Doak when you have crew I know that to isant to break up that means you don't nor do them thank I would say the thing we looked at very carefully is what to do with the separation sequence do we go with the normal sequence where we could get a little bit more data on how the navigation system performs as it flies around the space station we do have one of our requirements is to be able to fly around the space station which we've done a few with dragon just to characterize the exterior surface of the space station and see if there's anything that we can we can learn about the space station so the original purpose was to was to do that part of that trajectory part of that fly around when we looked at the performance of the thrusters and improved our understanding over the last few weeks um we chose to go with a simpler sequence uh to get away from station a little faster and then not really put the station at any risk if you had Fuster obviously you saw an approach we had five different Thruster fail offs which we were able to recover each of those thrusters we were able to have good control of the vehicle all those various time frames on the approach uh it just took that whole strategy out of the equation by going with this very simple sequence which was already a part of the software and so the Boeing team did an Innovative job of choosing that sequence and and that's what we're going to go fly I'm not sure I copied the first question but maybe maybe Dana did what was the first question along the lines of uncrewed versus crude oh uncrewed versus crude um you know it was a tough decision to make um you know there really is it was really hard to determine whether to be uncrewed or not I would say the teams were very split in the um uncertainty relative to the thrusters and so you know the NASA team chose to return Butch and sunny on uh dragon we'll go to our next question from David denal with about space today my question is for Steve at our last briefing and what youve just said uh about the meeting between Boeing and NASA and after the briefing several people come forward and said it was kind of a very heated meeting almost a shouting match and Boeing's assistant is saying their spacecraft is safe for astronauts you come on on that and and kind of bring this to an end yeah I would say the last meeting we had where we talk detailed technical data on uh the different positions and the different analyses uh I would not characterize it as as heated I would say anytime you're in a meeting of this magnitude where there's this kind of decision uh there is some tension in the room um Boeing believed in the model that they had created uh that tried to predict Thruster degradation uh for the rest of the flight I would say the NASA team looked at the model and saw some limitations and it really had to do with do we have confidence in the thrusters and how much we could predict their degradation from undock through the deorbit burn and the NASA team due to the uncertainty in the modeling could not get comfortable with that and so I wouldn't say it was a a yelling screaming kind of meeting it was a a tense technical discussion where we had uh both sides listening intently to all the data and uh in the end to make a decision whether to return crude or un crude and NASA chose to um allow Butch and sun to say stay on station return on crew nine and we'll bring the vehicle back on crewed on Friday I think I would just like to add add one thing to that you know from a a Boeing standpoint um they certainly know their spacecraft and they're analyzing um risks and what they think the capability is with the Starliner vehicle but uh Boeing is not in a position and it would be unfair them to ask our way into a risk versus risk trade for the scenario that NASA was weighing which was bringing them home in the Starliner crude or coming up with an alternate plan using crew N9 and having them be part of the Expedition and so I think you also have to recognize that the agency is in a bit of a different position in terms of our understanding about the uh the risks and what's available to us uh without starliners so that's also a reason for a difference in the the opinions and Boeing even stated that as part of the the review last week acknowledging that that part is really in NASA's hands in terms of making that trade they can't weigh in on that part of the trade for the agency we'll go now to Ken Kramer with space up close hi thank you for taking my question a lot of good information um I want to go back to the uh the hot fires please been wondering about this for a while and why did you not do more hot fire tests in the or uh when you were still uh while you're still Dock and can you also please describe these these pulses how intense will these pulses be um the same as the hot frer test after it undocks or will they be longer and then finally um Steve you mentioned about changing the pulsing of the thrusters on the ground and hoping that would be sufficient I'm just wondering if you maybe shouldn't be a little bit more proactive in dissipating the Heat and that just tried to change the pulses of the fres to minimize the heat hey Ken we're having some issues with your audio here we were able to catch a couple of the questions in there I got uh why did you not do more hot fire tests while you were still docked and then we also caught will the ones after undocking be longer yeah okay last the last question was when you do the ground testing okay uh you mentioned that you're just going to change the puling why not be more proactive in trying to dissipate the heat in a redesign thank you I caught um about being more proactive yeah I think I'll try let me see if I caught it the the com was a bit garbled so uh the first question was related to why didn't we do additional hot fire test while dock um I I think you know first of all there was um a downside to doing the test every time we ended up needing to do a hot fire test we used a little bit of the helium and we used some of our helium margin so we did one early on to try to understand the app thrusters what will be seeing on those uh and we actually perfected and and came up with a great system using um the space station Dan and his team did a wonderful job of being able to back out an estimate of the thrust considering the station weighs about a million pounds to use the navigation system on the station to back up the thrust that was that was important to us the second one we did and about two months after being docked we tested all the thrusters and that was important to understand the recovery of the the poppet and we think based on that testing the poppet had recovered almost almost 100 100% we were all the thrusters that we tested were almost back to the normal levels of thrust so we didn't really see a need to do more dock hot fire testing after that um the ones we will do undocked we will do a real short pulse about of a tenth of a second pulse on the thrusters and um you don't need as long of firing because what we'll do is put the vehicle in in free drift in other words there'll be no other firings and so when that Thruster fires we know for a nominal thrust about how much the vehicle should respond to it so we'll do um these real short pulses and then on the ground we're looking at um in terms of the ground testing uh we want to understand the kinds of pulses that that cause the heating but then we will look at ways inside the dog house there ways that we can dissipate the heat is there ways that we can maybe cool the thrusters there's a whole wide range of options we'll look at for uh making the thrusters operate in a manner where they're not susceptible to the heating all right we're running low on time but we will go to David Curley with Full Throttle take it away I have a scratchy connection too can you hear me clearly yes we hear you loud and clear excellent thank you uh Steve Stitch uh quick question you've you've talked about this can you describe the profile of using the thrusters after undocking are you trying to push them you're trying to keep them below what you normally do and bigger picture have you noticed the difference between the way the computer flies with the thrusters versus the way a human flies with the thrusters yeah the overall plan for undocking is to to minimize I would say the use of the thrusters uh in that undo like we talked about essentially uh once we uh open the hooks the Springs will push the vehicle Starliner away then we'll do some real um short Thruster firings to put us on a trajectory that Anthony described really well it'll take us above the station and behind and we'll be opening to a nice range to where we can execute the deorbit burn and then uh after that we really are going to just stay in um uh some very benign attitudes and not fire the thrusters very much at all um and then the next time they really get used is the deorbit burn and we'll uh what they're what they're used for there is to point the vehicle in other words to do the deorbit burn we need to point the the omac engines into the direction of tra travel and so there's four of those omx we'll Point those in that direction to execute the the retrograde burn we need to bring the vehicle back those thrusters will be used to hold the attitude and we're going to let those thrusters fire however they need to to hold that attitude and then afterwards we flip the vehicle around and then execute a series of uh Thruster firings with the forward thrusters um to back away uh the service module and crew module back away the service module backs away then it spins up and does a disposal burn and those are all done with the forward thrusters on the service module and so you know early on we're going to kind of you know be judicious with the Thruster firings in close and then sort of save the thrusters for the very end of the flight when we need them the most at the deal burn thank you steveen to all of our briefers today uh this is the end of our coverage here today but we will be back on the air Friday September 6th 4:45 p.m. central Time 5:45 p.m. Eastern for our undocking coverage of the Starliner spacecraft we'll be back at 9:50 p.m. central uh for the deorbit through Landing coverage and then we'll have a news conference Saturday morning to follow until then we'll see you then thanks so much for joining e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] still there app thank you so much she's ready to vote I thought about [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]