LIVE! NASA Boeing Starliner Return Media Briefing

e e e e e e e e good evening and welcome back to NASA Johnson Space Center and our post Landing news conference for the star liner crew flight test Starliner touched back down on Earth uh today or to yesterday depending on where you're watching from at 11:01 p.m. central time or 1 minute after midnight eastern time here today to discuss the mission with you and wrap it up we've got Joel Monto Bono Deputy associate administrator for space operations Mission directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington Steve Stitch the manager for the commercial crew program from NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Dana wagle manager for the International Space Station program here at NASA Johnson I'll let them each make some opening remarks and then we'll open up the floor for a question if you do have a question you can on the phone Bridge uh you can press star one to let us know let's start with Joel well first of all thank you for joining us uh for those here in the room and for those online um as was said NASA and bowling safely returned the Starliner spacecraft uh just after 11:00 p.m. central Time to the white sand space Harbor in New Mexico after spending approximately three months attached to the International Space Station it's great to have the Starliner home um a safe and successful Landing was exactly what we wanted um it was UN crude everybody see the systems work is is what exactly what we wanted it's important to remember this was a test mission right we this Mission uh the team spent a lot of time understanding the board doing additional testing out at White Sands doing analysis here and I mean the team the NASA team the Boeing team you know across the partnership we work together to get this data and and pull things um you know we did learn a lot this was of a crew um you know the Starliner on the atlas 5 the procedures and the processes for that uh on appro some manual piloting we had a successful docking and we had three vehicle on board the international space station as we learn to operate with the systems and the crew and the interfaces there um I want to go ahead and thank the the Boeing team the commercial crew program International Space Station program our International partners and all the engineers that worked on this mission to get us where we are today uh with that I'll hand it over to Steve thank you yeah thanks Joel and thanks for your interest in the commercial crew program and thanks for being here at a relatively late hour um it was a great day today to return Starliner it was great to have a successful undock the orbit and landing of the vehicle we're really excited to have clipo back on the ground you know Sunny told the ground team you've got this bring calyo back and that's what they did tonight uh I am thrilled for our Boeing team and all of our colleagues have worked this Mission across the country on the NASA team and the Boeing team they've put a lot of heart and soul into this Mission over many years and it's a a testament to those people that we got the vehicle back safely today I I can tell you that CFT is very personal to uh to our team and to a lot of the people that worked on the mission and it represents a tremendous honor to bring the vehicle back to achieve a lot of test objectives today when we brought the vehicle back and then really PVE the way for future Starliner missions uh I'm happy to report Starliner did really well today in the undock the orbit and Landing sequence uh you know we used the NASA docking system for the second time on the mission to to undock from the space station uh that system performed really well it's a derivative system will be used for Orion down the road so it was good to pave the way for Orion as well um the spacecraft executed a nominal breakout sequence the first time we've used that to back away from the station we backed out to about 5 MERS and then did a series of about 12 uh Burns using the service module for jets um and then we opened uh after that sequence of Maneuvers we ended up opening at about 22 km per rev away from the space station all those thrusters did really well through that sep sequence no problems at all no fail offs or any problems at all um you know we had a good chance to look at the helium system today when we uh before we undocked we repressurized that system we had a criteria of 8 PSI per hour in the olage system for that uh the helium and we were about four 4 and a half PSI per hour so the helium system performed really well um and then you know when we backed away from the system or from the St space station we did hotfire a number of thrusters on the service module uh all eight of those forward thrusters uh worked just great we were able to look at the thrust of those thrusters and it was nominal all were performed at 100% and we also hot fired two a thrusters and those worked well um we had great performance from the the GNC system uh the guidance navigation control the vest system uh last fight on of2 we had a little bit of trouble with a what we call a a calibration maneuver to to really make sure that the attitude is good for this uh space integrated GPS ins system and that went really well uh we had a deorbit burn that executed on time at 1117 p.m. central it was about 130 m/s 58 second burn was a really good burn um and the the service module thrusters performed well for that burn the omx performed well um you know we watched the burn we saw a couple things the in the starboard dogghouse you know we talked a little bit about the temperatures there being a little higher one of the thrusters S2 A2 didn't fail off but it had a little higher temperature than it expected so we'll look at that date a little bit after the flight and then another Thruster in the top dog house had a little higher temperature we intentionally had planned to inhibit uh the software to let thrusters fail off during the deorbit burn and that worked fine so we really need to go back and look at all that data um the service module separated away just fine uh that that sequence went well once we separate the service module we don't have good insight into those uh thrusters on the service module but we expected it to be in the Pacific Ocean right where we intended it to be uh during entry uh the vehicle performed great um it flew just fine the GNC system performed well uh perfect entry um the one thing that we uh we'll have to go look at after the flight is when we hot fired before we had the entry we hot fired on the crew module there's 12 thrusters and one of the upfiring thrusters did not perform at all uh we hot fired it twice and we used two different methods to talk to it two different uh parts of the avionic system and we never saw any chamber pressure any pulses there it looked like it's a this is different than the service module thrusters it's what we call a monopropellant system it's very simple it has a a valve that opens and then the propellant flows across a cat bed and as it flows across that cat bed there's a reaction and causes thrust and for some reason that Thruster did not perform but we used the Redundant Thruster on the other manifold there's another upfiring Thruster that worked just fine during entry but something we'll have to go work out um the uh you know it was a bullseye Landing uh great landing out at White um the one thing we worked a little bit during entry is for some reason when we came out of the Plaza PL uh the navigation system we call it the sigy 3 uh kind of failed off temporarily and then that system was brought back on and it was tracking just fine um sigy 2 also had a couple little hiccups during entry we'll have to go look at that um and that's really the only things that happened during entry the sublimator that we had a little trouble with that's a cooling device that us used to cool the vehicle during entry it performed really well um we had a little trouble forming what we call an block on that during Asin and that performed great tonight it's really great to get the spacecraft back and then we'll start the next steps we've been talking to the Boeing team already about next steps we want to get into the spacecraft uh and start working on the helium system you know we talked about we know we have a seal that we've got to go replace on the flanges on the RCs thrusters we need to upgrade that material to make it hyper goall compatible and then maybe a little bigger size we'll do that uh Boeing's already formed teams to look at the the changes that need to be made for Starliner one uh in terms of the thermal environment in the doghouses can we do something different to make the doghouses a little less thermally severe for the omac burns and the thrusters um a second team is looking at uh the hot fire of the thrusters that's needed on the service module to complete the qualification and make sure we understand which pulses cause the Teflon seed on the oxide to swell and then thirdly there's a GNC team already formed that look and figure out how we go fly the vehicle differently can we change the deadbands can we change the way it flies to not stress the thrusters and so that work has already started and that's really the path to Starliner one so I'm I'm super proud of the team it was a great day for the commercial crew program and also for Boeing congratulations to that team who worked so hard it's great to have the spacecraft back and we're now focused on Starliner one and I'll turn it over to Dana thank you very much Steve and thank you all for being here with us at this uh very late hour and for your interest in the uh undocking of the Starliner from the International Space Station and its successful Landing I want to congratulate the Boeing team they did a fantastic job with the operations this evening um they had to make a number of changes to the plan in short order there were a lot of differences between the crude and the uncrewed mission including as Steve talked about the differences in the departure sequence fantastic job executing that um after Starlin undocked from the harmony or node two forward Port it backed away and then executed a series of breakout Burns it went up over and behind ISS the crew was watching it until it was out of view um but then they came back and they watched the re-entry and the deorbit in fact they got some really neat views of the Starliner streaking through the atmosphere using some of the station uh video cameras on board pretty neat to see um the rest of the month in front of us on board station is really busy I know I've talked to you about this before but just as a reminder next week we've got the soyu crew exchange with the launch of the 73 soy use on September 11th bringing up NASA astronaut Don Pettit and then we're returning NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson on the 72 s so when that comes home at the end of the month we'll bring up crew n do a Handover between crew8 crew N9 and then bring the crew8 vehicle home um I do want to express my sincerest appreciation for the the team they worked tirelessly over the whole summer you know we had the Starliner on board station for uh months uh most folks were working nights weekends uh they did an excellent job the proof is in uh getting the vehicle safely home today I know we've got a lot of things that we learned on the mission we've got work in front of us but I know that we've got the right teams in place to tackle these challenges and uh help us fly our future Starliner missions and with that I will hand it back over to Brandy all all right thank you okay so we're going to start with questions here in the room then we'll take them from the phone Bridge reminder if you're joining us by phone let us know you have a question by pressing star one and if your question gets answered and you want to withdraw it you can uh press star two to get out of the queue but let's start here in the room uh how about Eric hi Eric Berg with ours Technica thanks for the great show tonight that was really a stunning re-entry um I wanted to ask about the Arc of the commercial crew program I was going to ask both Boeing and NASA but they I guess I guess they didn't show up for some reason um but anyway it's been a decade since the CT CCT cap awards were given out I had to go look up that acronym I'd forgotten it um it was but it was a big experiment in fixed price contracts and and human space flight and so I've just wondering a decade later and literally has been a decade um you know after all that's happened with dragon with Boeing with the you know the delays and and now with with this Mission just to get a sense of you from NASA if is the experiment of success and kind of what is the future of human space flight with this commercial approach you know I'll start you know from a a commercial standpoint um we have two crew Vehicles you know the dragon Starliner and obviously some work that we need to do on Starliner we have commercial vehicles with uh cargo vehicles in the dragon and the north of grum and signis we have the Dreamchaser that's coming up next year and so it's is it slower than you know what we expected absolutely right it is slower but it's we're making progress and and to me we we are learning um every time we have a mission we learn something that gets passed on we're sharing things across the commercial World um you saw you know last year I'll say you know blue origin had that uh that parachute anomaly and and the teams all got together and shared across the different companies you know what they learned and to me that's what this program is is helping out it's it's sharing the expertise of flying in space and now let Steve and Dana add yeah I think that's an interesting retrospective way to look at things Eric the fact that here we are 10 years into the program and and how are we doing uh I I would say we've done a great job at fielding two Transportation Systems in in in Fairly record time if you look at our development programs these days with in NASA commercial crew has done uh an amazing feat of getting to two crude vehicles in in 10 years and really in the last four years having bringing Along online Dragon crew dragon and then also um now Starliner uh the unique thing that we're doing as well is sort of fostering this Market in in low earth orbit you know we already see space you know SpaceX flying um non-nasa flights they have one that they're they're trying to get off the ground around polaron they flew inspiration 4 they've flown a number of Pam missions they've got another Pam Mission coming up in the middle of of of next year um so you're starting to see that market get fostered and non- nass emissions which was what we won and then if you really think about our vehicles and what we really want to do um Space Station's a great vehicle it's awesome place but at some point you know the space station is going to need to be retired and so we're preparing Vehicles right now to be there in the future for these commercial Leo destinations as well so I think it's been an interesting as you said and when we started it was kind of an experiment on the heels of cargo but now we're starting to see you know the benefits of the Investments by both NASA and our partners and that's the one thing that's different about our program is there's investment from both nether NASA side and also in my case SpaceX and Boeing to make the vehicle safe and successful [Music] all right Mark oh thank you U Mark Caro with the aviation weaken space technology um how long would you sort of estimate that it will will take uh the commercial crew Program Space Station uh partnering or or whatever to sort of assess this flight and what steps need to follow um you know just kind of to make a full report report that you're all satisfied with that layout steps ahead yeah I think the timeline is a little bit uh we're going to take our time to figure out what we need to do to go fly Starliner one right you know we've laid out uh right now manifest wise we have that flight booked uh next year in the in the second slot of the year uh the first thing we'll do when we get the vehicle back continue to look at all the data look at the Thruster performance for this phase of flight in detail and then we already have these teams that I've talked about established uh they're going to start meeting weekly on looking at the design changes required in in the helium system to eliminate the leaks and then can we fly the vehicle different can we change the thermal in the doghouses what testing do we need at Whit Sands um it'll take a little time to lay that out and then get into the testing and then you know I think we'll see where we're at in another month or so and we'll have a little bit better idea of what the overall schedule will be okay g go ahead uh Gina sineri ABC News I'm not sure who wants this but we heard a lot about the problems but what about Starliner performance particularly impressed you or surprised you in a positive fashion yeah I I would say not a surprise but if I just look at the three flights we've flown um of1 of2 and and uh CFT you know the Starliner performance and executing the entry phase has been just about Flawless other than the problem we see with the sigy when it comes out of the the plasma a little bit it has a little trouble acquiring in one of the receivers it seems but if I look at the way the vehicle flies the Thruster performance uh heating the target at the Landing site the parachute deploys separating the forward heat shield and getting the drug parachutes out stabilizing the vehicle then putting the main parachutes out and then separating the heat shield which is a complicated separation and deploying the airbags um the third time now we've landed a capsule in the US on land uh the entry in particular has been been darn near Flawless so that I wouldn't say it surprised me but as I step back and think about the mission uh the entry itself was just and the orbit burn was spot on okay why don't we go to the phone Bridge next uh we will start with Mara Dunn with the associated breast yes hi um probably for you Steve it sounds like you won't require another test flight that an operational Starliner one with the crew will be next is that how it looks as of today am I understanding that correctly that the next flight will be fully certified ready to go with a crew to to to be a real crew swap thanks yeah I I would say it's probably too early to think about exactly what the next fight looks like I think we want to take the ne the steps to go look at all the data our certainly our goal is to get to the rotation flight our goal all along has been to have you know one flight a year one flight from Boeing Starliner and another flight from SpaceX with dragon so it'll take a little time to determine the path forward uh but today we saw the vehicle perform really well we've got some things we know we've got to go work on and we'll go do that and and fix those things and then go fly when we're ready so thank you Mara how about uh Bill Harwood with CBS News um yeah thanks um and actually Mara just asked my question so let me ask you a different one uh for Steve Stitch um if a crew had been on board the spacecraft tonight uh would anything have been different or would it just have been the the same re-entry we saw basically I mean I know you had a quick fly out you to get away from a station without the crew on board but just from a crew standpoint if they had been on board I just for the record everything would have been fine is that is that correct yeah if we' have had a crew on board the spacecraft we would have flown the same uh backway sequence from the space station and the same deorbit burn and executed the same entry and so it would have been a safe successful Landing with the crew on board uh had we have had Butch and sunny on board know that you you don't have second thoughts about these things but would would you have any second thoughts about the decision not to bring them back if you had it to do over again knowing what you know now about the landing yeah I think it's always hard to have that retrospective look you know we made the decision to have an uncrewed flight based on what we knew at the time and based on our knowledge of the thrusters and based on the modeling that we had and we you know if we' have had a model that would have predicted what we saw tonight perfectly yeah it looks like an easy decision to go say we could have had a crude flight but we didn't have that we didn't have a way to take that White Sands uh testing and anchor it in a model and uh so I think we made the right decision to not have Butch and sunny on board it's awfully it's awfully hard for the team it's hard for me when we sit here and have a successful Landing to to to be in that position but um you know it was a test flight and we didn't have confidence in with the certainty of the Thruster performance and that's really what led us to to choose to have the uncrewed test flight thanks okay next we'll go to sawer Rosenstein with nasaspaceflight.com thank you for taking my question first off congratulations on that uh successful Landing there uh you earlier mentioned about that uh nav system Dropout as it was coming out through the plasma there can you kind of explain what role that has and did that come back online at its own was there some ground intervention needed just what exactly was done to resolve it yeah the way the nav system works is we have uh three devices that that essentially are like a a GPS and then also measure velocity and and the orientation of the spacecraft and so when we came uh out of the plasma um one of the the third sigy space integrated GPS ins uh had trouble acquiring and so the software said it wasn't performing well it didn't have enough satellites and it failed it it failed it out uh the ground team looked at uh the two remaining systems uh sigy number one and sigy number number two sigy number two wasn't receiving marks as well as it should have they analyzed sigy number three did a great job looking at that and then brought that back into the the nav set and so we had three essentially GPS's and then protected for if number two would have been completely uh bad so the the team did a great job I think we just need to look at you know do we need to allow a little bit more time uh for the GPS to acquire uh on the back side of the blackout and uh the flight control team again did a great job recovering that GPS thank you uh let's go now to Will Robinson Smith with space flight now yes hi thanks for taking the time to speak with us after a good Landing um follow up on uh Mark her's question about timeline but in a slightly different way um when do you expect that uh cypo will arrive back at the County Spate Center and what's the immediate work that will need to be done uh once it arrives here thanks yeah don't have the exact timeline it usually takes a couple of weeks to get it back um one of the first things that happens when it comes back is uh a lot of the data uh that we get on board the spacecraft goes through the tracking data relay satellite to the ground and we can see that Telemetry in real time but there's also recorded data on board for the test flight we have a number of sensors uh across the systems that record data we'll want to down link all that high rate data and take a look at that uh data um and then really it's a series of analyzing all the data from uh the entry the undocking and the deorbit across all the systems on the vehicle to just see if there's anything that was off nominal will'll study the data at a little higher rate so you know it'll take a couple weeks to get it back and um a week or so to get the data off the spacecraft okay thank you uh Robert Pearlman with collect space thank you um when aul 13 safy landed NASA described the mission as a Successful Failure is that how you would label the outcome of this flight given that star star excuse me Starliner Landing was safe and successful but it failed to bring the crew home this Joel I would not call it a Successful Failure um we knew going in this was going to be a test mission we learned a lot uh the teams uh work together both the Boeing and the NASA team to understand the systems of the spacecraft and how they operated the team worked together at White Sands to understand the analysis that was done um you know on the test mission things don't always go as as you planned and so we were prepared the fact that this vehicles home we're very happy to have the vehicle home uh to me a success you know clearly we got some work to do the teams will understand that work and move forward and if you just look at mission objectives you know we think we've probably got 85 to 90% of the mission objectives we dock with the space station we stay docked for um three months as Joel said there's a lot of learning that happens in that 3 months that is invaluable for an increment Mission uh we did half of an increment essentially we having the vehicle there understanding how to work uh the Starliner team work with the ISS team analyzing the data for those three months so in some ways the mission overachieved some objectives in terms of being there for extra time um not having the crew on board obviously there's some things that we we we lack in terms of uh Butch and Sunny's test pilot expertise at how the vehicle performed what they saw in the cockpit we won't have that data but we still have the we of data from the spacecraft itself and so that will go toward the mission objectives and the certification of the vehicle thank you uh stepen Clark from RS Technica hi good morning thanks for taking my question uh a couple ones if I could uh Steve Stitch you mentioned a couple of the thrusters on the starboard and talk dogghouse got a little warm during uh the deorbit burn sequence I believe uh you said you inhibited some of the limits to prevent them from failing off during that deg over burn if those normal limits have been in place would those rusters have been deselected at the temperatures they reached and also since no one from Boeing is there uh Steve I'll ask you this what's the the kind of the state of the service module for Starliner one is it fully assembled you have to start taking it apart to get to these seals that you may need to replace and any other Hardware changes you might need to make before that mission thanks yeah let let's see uh relative to the temperatures getting a little high um I don't have the data with me to see whether it would have failed off or not had the had the software been enabled we intentionally had planned to fly the flight with the software uh inhibited even before the Thruster problems uh we had seen some overheating of some other parts of the thrusters in previous flights and so we wanted to go ahead and have that that flight detection or fault detection system in inhibited for the deorbit burn so I'm not quite sure I would can answer the question whether they would have failed off and then relative to the service module uh for Starliner one it's in the middle of being built um we'll get to a point where we have assembled the doghouses in at some level and then we'll have to stop and wait to see what the design changes are do we remove some of the thermal blankets uh inside those doghouses do we make some changes to make it uh a little cooler when we fire the omx and also the RCS thrusters um so it it is in a state of build uh and undergoing the final build process but we'll will hold for the final dogghouse assembly uh until we understand the design changes thank you apologize if I mispronounced this but isim Ahmed from AFP yes uh hi thanks um yeah just to follow up on um couple of questions from before um is there an actual chance that the next flight could indeed be crude U without requiring another on crew test and um is is Boeing pushing for that or have you have they spoken to you about that at all and just wondering why they're not on the call thank you let's see I'll take uh we'll start from the end there um we did talk to bowling before this uh they deferred to NASA to represent the mission I will tell you that uh Boeing has CR iCal work uh that they do for NASA the International Space Station program the commercial crew program and the space La space launch systems program and but their work is critical our success and and um we fully expect Boeing to continue all three of those programs and I think you know relative to getting to our final capability of having a certified vehicle and and having a capability to do the rotation missions with space station I think both Boeing and ASA share that goal we would both like to get there I think we just need a little time to lay out the plan and look at what testing is required and look at how can we validate that testing in flight and then uh what would be the risk uh with proceeding once we understand the design changes so we just need a little time to work through that okay let's go next to Jackie Goddard with times of London hello thank you yeah just following up on that last question we're not getting straight answer to why aren't Boeing here I I know you all want to be diplomatic but can you kind of give us an open honest assessment of is there a kind of healing process that Now lies ahead um this kind of should be a sort of moment of of Celebration but we don't have the Boeing folks here at the table there's no explanation why it doesn't appear that there's joyful Unity if there is um how do you folks fix the risk is there a risk um is there damage being done to the relationship thank you okay so I I'll answer again you know we talked to Boeing they said hey we'd like NASA and to take the Press brief they deferred to us to talk the mission um I can tell you that uh the three of us have all talked to the Boeing managers after the landing uh the Boeing managers came into the control room and congratulated the team uh talked to the NASA team and so um Boeing is committed to continue their work with us and I think you know from a human perspective uh all of us feel uh happy about the successful Landing but then there's a piece of us all of us that we wish it would have been the way we had planned it we had planned to have the mission land with Butch and sunny on board I think there's depending on who you are on the team different emotions associated with that and uh you know I think it's going to take a little time to work through that uh for me a little bit and then for everybody else on the Boeing and NASA team so okay next up we have Micah Maiden B from Wall Street Journal hi everyone I think this would uh be for Steve um D closing the mission I think unlocks a milestone payment for Boeing um is that right and how much would that payment be and would boing get um all of any payment you know because Starlight came back on crude and I think as you mentioned a couple minutes ago um got to 85 90% of the objectives uh for the fight thanks yeah so there there are a couple Milestones uh out there relative to Ops Readiness that we'll have to assess and then certification is the big one that's the big one that's coming up and we were working toward that we'll have to look at relative to the systems that need to be changed what does that mean for certification um you know we there was some changes to the vehicle that we talked about pre-flight that that there's some changes to the suits that are going to happen changes to the seats that affect certification and then obviously uh another aspect that has to happen for certification is we need the vehicle to go to both node to Ford and Zenith port and those are all wrapped up in certification so we're in the process right now of laying all that work out in terms of what we had planned to do and then uh obviously what the changes are and then we'll assess that Milestone when it's the right time okay next we'll hear from Maria Smith with space policy online Marsha if you're online you can ask your question now uh sorry I thought that Michael was still asking a question but anyway my question had to do with the crew module Thruster and I'm curious when is the last time that that Thruster was tested and were there any problems with the crew module thrusters on the previous two flights uh let's see that's a good question the that Thruster uh the upfiring Thruster um ctu2 was last used uh in 2019 on the of1 mission it performed well all the thrusters on of one on the crew module performed well we did have one thruster that uh was deselected by the software on of2 this was the crew module Thruster it was very late um around the time frame of drog deploy and we figured that to out to be a command problem so uh where the command didn't come out of What's called the integration propulsion controller correctly to the Thruster we took that Thruster off the vehicle and uh we went it sent it back to the vendor the vendor tested it hot fired at that thruster worked fine this Thruster today looked different I would say um in terms of multiple try attempts to hot fired it had no no response at all the Thruster that had failed off due to a command problem had had multiple Thruster firings uh it passed the hot fire on of1 uh I'm sorry of2 and then also had multiple firings during the entry this one for some reason just never fired and so it looked like the valve perhaps was not opening for some reason so we'll have to take that Thruster off the vehicle when we get it back to the C3 PF send it back to the vendor for some analysis and then we'll know more about what uh what the fixes are for that as well okay now we are going to go to David Curley with Full Throttle you've talked to Steve in the past about uh you know what do we what do we do about the vehicle is it changing some of the materials in the thrusters is it redesigning the dogghouse um I I know you have a lot to learn still instead as going but how much work do you think is actually ahead is it is it just using a computer to tell the thrusters to fire in a certain way as you did on re-entry today to to change their performance what do you actually think you'll have to do yeah that's a good that's a good question and we have again uh several teams off looking at that what we would like to do is try not to change the Thruster I think that is the the best path the thrusters have shown resilience and have shown that they perform well as long as we keep their temperatures down and don't don't fire them in a manner that causes the temperatures to go up that then causes either the vaporization of the oxidizer which causes low thrust or the popet swells um today obviously you know the thrusters at all recovered at station and obviously it looked like today we didn't uh have those high temperatures we knew that the downhill phase would be a little less demanding on the Thruster than the uphill phase what we need to do now is go take a Thruster at Whit Sands and make sure we understand the exact pole sequences that caused the heating and then uh at the same time in parallel look at software changes to reduce the the the number of Demands on the thrusters and then in parallel with that look at the doghouses and see if we can again they're trapping a bunch of heat we know that when we fire the thrusters the dog houses are trapping heat can we go make some changes to the blankets in the inside of the doghouses to keep the thrusters cooler so it's really three different thrust I would say okay next up we have Jonathan Woods with workington hey thanks for your time uh this morning it reflecting back on the question that was asked about the successful failure with Apollo 13 if we think back about 2020 when when crew Dragon demo 2 launched I think the most significant issue that we faced during that mission was uh launch scrub due to you know thunderstorms due uh during um it was tropical storm Bera um thinking about that you know when when when we say this mission is a success how do we position this versus the relative success of a a 60 odd day Mission with with demo 2 compared to the the insurmountable challenges the testing and everything that had to transpire to make the difficult decision to keep crew on board station for a very long duration Mission yeah I I'll take it and see if Joel has anything to add um you know when I looked look back at demo 2 uh demo 2 was very um very clean in flight however I think a lot of people forget that uh after landing we discovered uh around there there's a an a device called a tension tie that goes in between the dragon spacecraft and the trunk that attaches the two together and there's a very complicated uh thermal protection system close out around those tension ties we found out after the flight that we had some erosion around uh that thermal protection system area and we had to go change the design in between uh demo 2 and crew one we made some substantial changes uh to that close out and then went and flew so demo 2 had its challenges as well I think every test flight has its challenges uh what we see with Starliner is a a very robust spacecraft but yet we have some challenges with the thrusters that we've got to go attack and and move forward fix I wouldn't call them insurmountable I think you know what we've seen out of the Boeing and NASA team is a resilience and able to overcome uh challenges and we just need a little time to go work through it I think we learned a ton during this flight which is invaluable moving forward to Starliner one now we just need to take that learning and make some changes to the the system so that we don't overheat the thrusters and I'll see if Joel has anything to add and the only thing I'll add is you know the lessons learn that we have on these demo missions play forward to other future missions you know the question was asked earlier uh do you think the the programs the commercial programs have been a success and yes these lessons learn that we're able to take from both the Boeing Mission and from the dragon missions our lessons that we are carrying forward for future missions and future providers such that we can continue to develop the lower thoric commercial I would I would just add that it's really hard to compare the demo 2 mission to to this Mission keep in mind that we took a different path with the dragon Vehicles we developed cargo capability first um so by and large things like dealing with prop systems and a lot of the things that we're now learning with the screwed flight test uh were dealt with during the cargo era and then we upgraded the vehicle for crew so very different development pass between the two spacecraft that's a really good point thank you okay next we're going to hear from from Mike wall with uh I'm sorry it disappeared but Mike wall yeah hi I'm with space.com actually thank you for taking my question um yeah I just wanted to say first of all I me congratulations on successful landing and second I was just wondering if you if you heard anything more from from Butch and sunny just kind of how they're feeling today what their reactions were to The Landing and just how they're feeling about yeah like the next few months that they'll that they'll be spending on Orit thanks I haven't spoken to them today obviously today was really busy they were on board uh doing a lot of work for us um they did wish the vehicle well and and best wishes for the landing and of course they they watched it the whole evening so no updates from what I reported before um you know after station's always busy I know I always tell you guys that but after Starliner departed they were off working on other activities for us so right away they jumped into some other work so no other updates from what I've reported to you previously okay and we've got one more question on the Pham Bridge from Sophie Sanchez with Cosmic Chicago hi thank you for kicking my call um I had a question about the failed thrusters that were mentioned um was the Redundant Thruster that you mentioned part of the same system and just a hypothetical question I guess if that had failed um what would have been next and what could have happened if they both failed thank you yeah the um we did have a redundant Thruster uh available on the crew module to do the function that we needed um we did need that Thruster to work during all of Entry so I wouldn't say allive entry but through the highest part of Entry to a certain phase if that Thruster would have failed it would have been acceptable but um once we got off the uh separated from the service modor we no longer have those thrusters so the one remaining up firing Thruster worked just fine um we'll go back and understand what happened with the the ctu2 Thruster that failed and and we'll go solve that problem and move forward okay we did have one more question come in uh from Kenneth Chang with the New York Times yeah hi thank you uh this is for Steve Stitch um so during this new cont you've outlined a bunch of work that you need to do especially with the thrusters and the doghouses in the past you've also mentioned that it's really hard to test the doghouses on on the ground because getting the whole system to mimic what you see in space how will we be able will you be able to get enough data uh through simulations and through testing that you had the confidence for Starliner one without flying another test light yeah that that's a great question we um we're going to take the data from this flight and and work to build models on the ground and then we're also going to look at is there a way to test uh what I would call an integrated dogghouse on the ground in a in a vacuum chamber we've got some ideas on maybe how to do that at wh Sands we'll put a team together to see if we can actually put it in a chamber and and fire the omx and the other thrusters and and GAP that data in that environment and then you know extrapolate that data uh to the orbit vehicle so there may be a way we just need a little bit of time to work through that all right well I think that is our last question so we will wrap up there thank you so much St briefers for sticking with us through uh a late night we really appreciate it and thanks to all of you for following along with starliners test flight we appreciate that as well please uh continue to stay tuned uh next week Wednesday morning at 11 uh 108 excuse me 10:15 am. Central 11:15 a.m. eastern time we're going to be having the coverage of the soy ms26 launch carrying NASA astronaut Don petet and his cosmina crewm mates Alexi oin and Ivon Vagner to the International Space Station so more to come in space please stick with us and we appreciate your coverage thanks so much [Music] e for