Today is the big day for NASA and Boeing to finally find out what went wrong with Starliner. Fortunately, the decision was made last month to bring the disabled spacecraft back to Earth WITHOUT putting its crew into harms way.
It was reported by CBS News that the hatch was closed at 1:29 PM yesterday by its crew, Commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Copilot Sunita Williams, who kept their thoughts to themselves.
Leaving Wilmore and Williams behind, the Starliner is expected to undock from the International Space Station's forward Harmony module just after 6 PM today. Five hours and fifteen minutes later, the spacecraft's powerful braking rockets are programmed to fire for about fifty-nine seconds to drop the ship out of orbit.
During a late August press conference announcing its decision to send Starliner back empty, NASA commercial crew program manager Steve Stich admitted that "there was just too much uncertainty in the prediction of the thrusters."
“People really want to understand the physics of what's going on relative to the physics of the Teflon, what's causing it to heat up and what's causing it to contract," he admitted. "That's really what the team is off trying to understand. I think the NASA community in general would like to understand a little bit more of the root cause."
Starliner is expected to descend under its three main parachutes to an airbag-assisted four-mph touchdown just after midnight at White Sands, NM, where Boeing and NASA recovery teams will be standing by.
Then, a real investigation will begin to try and determine what went wrong. Hopefully, it will be done professionally, to learn what mistakes were made in the design and development, without rancor or blame, so that this potential disaster NEVER happens again.
Good Luck, Starliner!
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