Boeing’s Starliner capsule is seen docked to the International Space Station in this zoomed-in view of an image captured by Maxar Technologies’ WorldView-3 satellite on June 7, 2024. (Image credit: Maxar Technologies via NASA)
Update Sept 7, 2024
The Starliner capsule returned to Earth safely from the International Space Station last night, without the two astronauts it took up there in June. Boeing and NASA engineers will review the vehicle’s performance on reentry as they consider the future of the program.
Two astronauts who flew to the International Space Station on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft will return to Earth next year on a SpaceX “Crew Dragon” vehicle, their planned eight-day test flight turned into a two-thirds of a year ordeal. It is yet another of a long list of failures by the once venerated aerospace company in recent years.
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has a new mission. Having proven that powered, controlled flight is possible on the Red Planet, the Ingenuity experiment will soon embark on a new operations demonstration phase, exploring how aerial scouting and other functions could benefit future exploration of Mars and other worlds.
So “Ginny,” her primary proof of concept mission over, will serve as a scout for “Percy,” flying ahead of the rover to survey locations Perseverance will investigate in its search for life on Mars. It will also help mission planners plot the best routes for Percy to follow. She’ll fly ahead and land and wait for the rover to catch up. That’s Teamwork.
Crew-2
NASA TV/4-24-2021
It got crowded on the International Space Station with the arrival of “Crew-2,” SpaceX’s second regular and third actual flight taking humans to the ISS (there was a test mission known as “Demo-2”). There hadn’t been eleven people on board since the Space Shuttle era.
There were other milestones as well. This was SpaceX’s first reused crew capsule to reach the orbiting platform and the first crewed mission with a reused Falcon 9 rocket. The Crew-2 astronauts themselves made history when they started boarding. This was the first time SpaceX had carried passengers from three different agencies (NASA, ESA and JAXA).
Crew-1
NASA TV/5-2-2021
The overcrowding on the ISS came to an end just a few days later with the spectacular nighttime landing of SpaceX’s Crew-1 “Resilience” capsule with four astronauts on board. They landed in the gulf of Mexico just before 3am Eastern Time. But with cameras tuned for night the scene was clearly visible in spite of the pitch dark ocean lighting.
Crew Dragon Resilience will add to its time in space on its next mission launching the privately-funded Inspiration4 crew on a multi-day Earth orbit mission targeted for September.
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