Skip to main content
https://www.highperformancecpmgate.com/rgeesizw1?key=a9d7b2ab045c91688419e8e18a006621

Boeing’s Starliner crew spacecraft nails desert landing, a first for a U.S.-made, human-rated capsule

The Boeing Starliner CST-100 spacecraft, which will be one of the first new human-rated spacecraft to carry astronauts from the U.S. to space, has successfully returned from orbit and landed at its target landing site in White Sands, New Mexico. The capsule touched down at 7:58 AM EST, right on time for the mission’s planned schedule as detailed at a news conference on Saturday.

Starliner didn’t have anyone on board, but was instead on its first test flight intended to launch, dock with the International Space Station and then return to Earth. The uncrewed flight didn’t go exactly as planned, however – that docking with the ISS never happened because of an error with the mission timer on board the spacecraft, which caused the Starliner to burn too much fuel during an early orbital maneuver and subsequently forced Boeing and NASA to change the mission parameters.

The flight still represents a number of successes for Boeing, however, as it was able to gather a lot of data on its trip, and did execute other maneuvers as planned and designed, including this landing. The landing itself is also significant because it’s the first time a capsule made in the U.S. has landed on land after returning from space ever – earlier American capsule spacecraft like Mercury, Gemini and the Apollo command module all splashed down on water.

Starliner began its deorbit burn at around 7:23 AM EST, re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and deployed all three of its descent control parachutes as planned. It’ll now be recovered by Boeing and NASA and examined, with more data gathered from its onboard computers. The capsule also carries ‘Rosie,’ a flight test dummy that will help the teams working on the commercial spacecraft approximate how the landing would’ve gone for a human on board.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp steps back from board director role

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp is relinquishing his role as a board director and switching to board observer — where he says he’ll focus on product strategy for the ride hailing giant. Camp made the announcement in a short Medium post in which he writes of his decade at Uber: “I’ve learned a lot, and realized that I’m most helpful when focused on product strategy & design, and this is where I’d like to focus going forward.” “I will continue to work with Dara [Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO] and the product and technology leadership teams to brainstorm new ideas, iterate on plans and designs, and continue to innovate at scale,” he adds. “We have a strong and diverse team in place, and I’m confident everyone will navigate well during these turbulent times.” The Canadian billionaire entrepreneur signs off by saying he’s looking forward to helping Uber “brainstorm the next big idea”. Camp hasn’t been short of ideas over his career in tech. He’s the co-founder of the web 2.0 recommendatio
Post a Comment
Read more

Drone crash near kids leads Swiss Post and Matternet to suspend autonomous deliveries

A serious crash by a delivery drone in Switzerland have grounded the fleet and put a partnership on ice. Within a stone’s throw of a school, the incident raised grim possibilities for the possibilities of catastrophic failure of payload-bearing autonomous aerial vehicles. The drones were operated by Matternet as part of a partnership with the Swiss Post (i.e. the postal service), which was using the craft to dispatch lab samples from one medical center for priority cases. As far as potential applications of drone delivery, it’s a home run — but twice now the craft have crashed, first with a soft landing and the second time a very hard one. The first incident, in January, was the result of a GPS hardware error; the drone entered a planned failback state and deployed its emergency parachute, falling slowly to the ground. Measures were taken to improve the GPS systems. The second failure in May, however, led to the drone attempting to deploy its parachute again, only to sever the line
Post a Comment
Read more

ProtonMail logged IP address of French activist after order by Swiss authorities

ProtonMail , a hosted email service with a focus on end-to-end encrypted communications, has been facing criticism after a police report showed that French authorities managed to obtain the IP address of a French activist who was using the online service. The company has communicated widely about the incident, stating that it doesn’t log IP addresses by default and it only complies with local regulation — in that case Swiss law. While ProtonMail didn’t cooperate with French authorities, French police sent a request to Swiss police via Europol to force the company to obtain the IP address of one of its users. For the past year, a group of people have taken over a handful of commercial premises and apartments near Place Sainte Marthe in Paris. They want to fight against gentrification, real estate speculation, Airbnb and high-end restaurants. While it started as a local conflict, it quickly became a symbolic campaign. They attracted newspaper headlines when they started occupying prem
Post a Comment
Read more