Intro by now Starliner is back on the ground and on its way to Boeing facilities in Florida for inspection and refurbishment this comes after a successful undocking and re-entry of the capsule and a landing at Whit Sands however as revealed in the post Landing teleconference there were a few issues that arose during the return including multiple Thruster failures and even a new problem that popped up with the navigation system this puts the company in an even more difficult position as they decide what to do going forward here I'll go more in depth into the landing some of the issues they experienced the next steps and more [Music] Overheating Thrusters on September 6th at 6:04 p.m. EDT Bo's uncrewed Starliner spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station practically right away it began a number of different Thruster firings are part of a breakout burn which was meant to undock faster than normal they had expressed prior to the undocking that one of the purposes of this was the fact that it put less stress on the thrusters over the next few hours the capsule traveled further from the station in preparation for its deorbit burn this was one of the areas leading up to the end talking that NASA officials were partially worried about and helped their decision to send the spacecraft back UNR cruit the thought process being that this Mission milestone in particular was one of the most demanding on the thrusters as somewhat predicted they did run into higher temperatures than intended in the post Landing teleconference Steve SSH the commercial crew program manager at Nasa said we had a deorbit burn that executed on time at 11:17 p.m. it was about a 130 M pers second burn we watched the burn we saw a couple things in the starboard dogghouse we talked a little bit about the Thruster temperatures there being A Little Higher One of the thrusters S2 A2 didn't fail off but it had a little higher temperature than expected so we'll look at that data after the flight and then another Thruster in the top dogghouse had a little higher temperature he said he then mentioned we intentionally had planned to inhibit the software to let thrusters fail off during the deorbit burn and that worked fine so we really need to get back and look at all that data he said despite these higher temperatures the thrusters were able to complete the deorbit burn and S Starliner on its way toward Landing only a few minutes after this burn the service module was jettison to burn up during our three entry for context that service module hosted most of the thrusters that up until this point had been having issues unfortunately another Thruster issue occurred later in the flight with the crew module here Steve Stitch said during entry the vehicle performed great the one thing we will have to go look at after the flight is when we hot fired before we had the entry on the crew module there are 12 thrusters and one of the upfiring thrusters did not perform at all we hot fired it twice and we used two different methods to talk to it two different parts of the avionic system and we never saw any chamber pressure or any puls is there he went on to say this is different from the surface module thrusters it's what we call a monopropellant system it's very simple it has a valve that opens and then the propellant flows across that catbed and as it flows across that catbed there's a reaction to it and it causes thrust and for some reason that Thruster did not perform he said thankfully they were able to instead use a redundant Thruster in order to compensate for that Thruster malfunction at this point in the mission Starliner was on track and using its navigation system to ensure it ended up at the Whit Sand's Landing location this process however also ran ran into an anomaly Steve Stitch said it was a bullseye Landing great landing out at Whit Sands the one thing we worked a little bit during entry was for some reason when we came out of the plasma the navigation system we call it the sigy 3 kind of failed off temporarily and then that system was brought back on and it was tracking just fine sigy 2 also had a couple little hiccups during entry we'll have to go look at that he said despite these anomalies the capsule went on to deploy its parachutes and eventually made a safe landing at Whit Sands bringing the mission to an end teams then went over and ensured the vehicle was safe before performing a host of different objectives in a way the mission isn't really over until both Butch and sunny are back on the ground but that won't be until early next year currently the SpaceX crew 9 launch which will be the vehicle to return them is set to launch on September 24th in a few Starliner's Future weeks based on recent events and Starliner history as a whole it's hard to picture what the vehicle's future will look like we've now heard from NASA multiple times that they intend to keep working with Boeing and pursue a crude flight in the future however that's not going to be easy it's going to take both a significant amount of time and money to ensure the vehicle is ready for a full crew and ISS rotation one of the main problems is the fact that nearly every launch a new set of issues pops up for example on this flight the helium leaks and the overheating thrusters were far from ideal but they were thought to be the main issue and somewhat understood then during the return we see anomalies with one of the crew modules thrusters and even the navigation system while inconsequential to the overall Landing it joins a long list of little things that didn't quite go right when it comes to a vehicle carrying humans the fewer surprises the better either way work has now begun to try and fix any issues and prepare the spacecraft for a future crude Mission stit explained that three different Boeing teams are working on different parts of the spacecraft specifically he said 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 the next steps we want to get into the spacecraft and start working on the helium system we know we have a seal that we've got to go replace on the flanges on the RCs thrusters we need to upgrade the material to make it hyperbolic compatible and maybe a little bigger size will do that he then said boing's already formed teams to look at the changes that need to be made for Starliner one in terms of the thermal environment can we do something different to make a dogghouse less thermally severe for the omac burns and the thrusters a second team is looking at 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 a Teflon seal on the oxide to swell and then thirdly there's a GNC team already formed to look at and figure out how we can fly the vehicle differently can we change the headbands can we change the way it flies to not stress the thrusters and so that work is already started and that's really the path to Starliner 1 he said when he mentions Starliner 1 he's referring to the official first crude mission of the vehicle in other words the crude flight we just watched was a certification Mission with a partial crew to make sure the vehicle was capable had the mission been successful and the crew returned on Starliner Starliner 1 would be the next mission now after the uncrewed landing teams are trying to decide whether they go straight to Starliner 1 or require another test flight based on what we're hearing it sounds more like if they do continue on with the vehicle the next flight will be an official crude Mission rather than another test that mission was originally scheduled for February 2025 but was delayed to August 2025 another important aspect of the Starliner program as a whole involves the monetary charges against the vehicle at this point NASA has issued $1.6 billion in charges de boing and Starliner in particular due to delays and issues with the vehicle this recent uncrewed return on a crude flight is only expected to add to that total as they now work to fix a number of different issues and take more time when talking about future flights dish said we're going to take our time to figure out what we need to do to go fly Starliner 1 it's probably too early to think about what the next flight looks like he said the last piece of information relative to the program in this Mission has to do with the Boeing Representatives after Starliner landed NASA held a teleconference where we could hear from both NASA and Boeing on the vehicle's next steps before the event an NASA advisory stated that two Boeing Executives John Shannon vice president of Boeing exploration systems and Mark nappy Boeing vice president and Commercial crew program manager would participate in reality neither attended and only NASA officials were at the meeting when NASA was asked about Boeing's absence they said we talked to Boeing they said they'd like NASA to take the Press brief they finished by saying Boeing is committed to continue their work with us in a statement Mark nappy said we will review the data and determine the next steps for the program after about 3 months in Space the Starliner capsule finally returned unfortunately for Boeing this was without a crew after Nessa determined that the Thruster issues among other complications added too much risk for a human return now the compan is in an interesting position as they decide what the best future is for their spacecraft we will have to wait and see how it progresses and the impact it has on the space industry thank you very much for watching