Space News Jeff Foust — January 7, 2020
NASA and Boeing will cooperate on an investigation into a timer anomaly that cut short December’s uncrewed test flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft as NASA weighs whether to require another such test flight.
In a Jan. 7 statement, NASA said the agency and Boeing were establishing a “joint, independent investigation team†to determine the primary cause of the timer problem the Starliner suffered immediately after its Dec. 20 launch on what was to be an eight-day mission to the International Space Station.
Boeing later said that the mission elapsed timer on the spacecraft was off by 11 hours, causing the spacecraft to think it was in the wrong phase of its mission immediately after separation from the upper stage of the Atlas 5 that launched it. The spacecraft fired its thrusters in reaction to the incorrect time, and by the time spacecraft controllers on the ground were able to take control, the spacecraft had expended too much propellant to allow it to dock with the station. The spacecraft instead landed safely at White Sands, New Mexico, Dec. 22.
More:
https://spacenews.com/joint-nasa-boeing-team-to-investigate-starliner-test-flight-anomaly/
