the unmanned shipStarliner of Boeing has landed safely in the desert of New Mexico in USA. Thus ends its five-day trip in which the capsule has been put to the test for future manned missions and with which the company intends to achieve the certification of the NASA. The spacecraft also successfully docked a few days ago with no problem to the International Space Station.
The private firm expects to obtain certification from the NASA that allows it to transport astronauts to and from the ERAas the private firm SpaceX already does through its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule, with which they have already carried out four manned missions to the space station.
The OFT-2 has not recorded major incidents, except for the one that occurred last Thursday, May 19, regarding 30 minutes following takeoff from Cape Canaveral (Florida), when two capsule thrusters failed during the process of insertion into the planned orbit that He put it in the direction of the ISS, where it arrived and docked without problems some 24 hours later.
That incident, which led to the start-up of a backup engine, may lengthen the analysis that NASA will do prior to certification and, consequently, delay the capsule’s first manned trip to the ISS, which had been tentatively planned. by the end of this year.
Initially, this mission was scheduled to take place in August 2021, but the company decided to suspend it following detecting problems caused by the ingress of moisture in some valves of the ship’s propulsion system.
In December 2019, following taking off successfully, a first attempt by the spacecraft to reach the ISS failed, as it deviated from the planned course due to technical problems and did not reach the desired orbit.
Like SpaceX, the firm of billionaire Elon Musk, Boeing has a contract of more than 4,200 million dollars (more than 3,900 million euros) with NASA to take care of the round trip transportation of astronauts and equipment to the ISS taking off from US soil
