Get the latest tech news
Two astronauts wait to come home as Boeing races to understand spacecraft issues. Here’s what’s at stake
Two test pilots helming the inaugural crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft are in a tentative position — and so is Boeing’s reputation in spaceflight.
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft was set to mark its crowning achievement this month: Ferrying two NASA astronauts on a round trip to the International Space Station, proving the long-delayed and over-budget capsule is up for the task. But the two veteran astronauts piloting this test flight are now in a tentative position — extending their stay aboard the space station for a second time while engineers on the ground scramble to learn more about issues that plagued the first leg of their journey. Michael Lembeck, an aerospace engineering associate professor of practice at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who was a consultant for Boeing’s spaceflight division from 2009 to 2014, told CNN that it would be difficult to determine whether additional ground tests may have caught the thruster issues at hand.
Or read this on r/technology
