Photos and videos taken from space show the breadth of Hurricane Milton, a massive storm churning in the Gulf of Mexico towards Florida.
The storm is expected to make landfall late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. While moving over the Gulf of Mexico, Milton has fluctuated between a Category 4 and 5 storm.
Multiple timelapse videos taken by NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick show the storm from the Dragon Endeavour spacecraft. Dominick is a flight engineer aboard the orbiting laboratory, which is attached to the International Space Station. In one post on social media, Dominick said that he had a view of the storm from the window in his sleeping quarters.
The timelapse he shared through that window on Wednesday morning showed the storm as it approached Florida’s western coast. He noted that the storm looked even bigger than it had the day before.
Timelapse flying by Hurricane Milton today about 2 hours ago. Storm looks bigger but less symmetric than yesterday.
Dominick and three other astronauts were supposed to return to Earth on Monday after a seven-month stay at the International Space Station, but their return has been delayed by the massive storm.
External cameras attached to the International Space Station captured still images of the hurricane. The photo, taken from 257 miles above the planet, clearly shows the small eye at the center of the storm.
This photo from the International Space Station shows Hurricane Milton as a Category 5 storm in the Gulf of Mexico on Oct. 8, 2024.
NASA
Additional photos shared by NASA’s Johnson Space Center and space station accounts show various views of the massive storm from above.
257 miles above the Earth, external cameras on the @Space_Station captured more imagery of Hurricane #Milton and its eye as the storm approaches the Gulf Coast of Florida. pic.twitter.com/f0tawnzBQC
— NASA’s Johnson Space Center (@NASA_Johnson) October 8, 2024
Hurricane #Milton is pictured as a Category 5 storm in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Yucatan Peninsula from the space station on Oct. 8, 2024. pic.twitter.com/S7Hpe5GFMp
— International Space Station (@Space_Station) October 9, 2024
A longer video captured by the same external cameras shows the station traveling over Hurricane Milton on Monday morning, when it was a Category 5 storm.
At 10:28 a.m. EDT October 7, the space station flew over Hurricane Milton and external cameras captured views of the category 5 storm, packing winds of 175 miles an hour, moving across the Gulf of Mexico toward the west coast of Florida. pic.twitter.com/MTtdUosiEc
— International Space Station (@Space_Station) October 7, 2024
The National Weather Service in Tampa Bay described Milton as “a historic storm for the west coast of Florida” that could prove to be the worst to hit the Tampa Bay area in more than a century. Other predictions suggest the storm might make landfall closer to Sarasota.
After landfall, Milton will continue across Florida while rapidly weakening after losing the fuel of the warm Gulf waters, but still maintaining its hurricane status. It would then exit into the Atlantic Ocean before quickly transitioning into a tropical storm Thursday afternoon.
Kerry Breen is a news editor at CBSNews.com. A graduate of New York University’s Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism, she previously worked at NBC News’ TODAY Digital. She covers current events, breaking news and issues including substance use.
After days of uncertainty, the Federal Aviation Administration announced Sunday that SpaceX had been cleared to press ahead with the planned Monday launch of the European Space Agency’s $398 million Hera asteroid probe, stormy weather permitting.
With forecasters calling for an 85% chance of thick clouds and showers that would trigger a delay, Hera’s launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket from pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is targeted for 10:52 a.m. EDT Monday. The forecast is 75% “no-go” if launch is delayed to Tuesday.
“The last hurdle is the weather. So, please, please, I need you to do something about it!” Hera project manager Ian Carnelli joked with reporters Sunday. “It’s the only thing I really cannot control. … It looks like we have some opening around the time of launch, but it’s really impossible to say at the moment.”
An artist’s impression of the European Space Agency’s Hera probe (left) and two small sub-satellites that will orbit the asteroid Didymos and its small moon Dimorphos to learn more about how the high-speed impact of NASA’s DART probe in September 2022 altered the moonlet’s orbit and structure. Both missions are part of an effort to determine how to safely deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth.
Launch of NASA’s $5.2 billion Europa Clipper mission, which had been planned for Thursday from the Kennedy Space Center, has been put on hold pending passage of the storm.
“The safety of launch team personnel is our highest priority, and all precautions will be taken to protect the Europa Clipper spacecraft,” said Tim Dunn, a senior launch director with NASA’s Launch Services Program.
“Once we have the ‘all-clear’ followed by facility assessment and any recovery actions, we will determine the next launch opportunity.”
Likewise, the return to Earth of three astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon ferry ship has been delayed by predicted bad weather.
Crew 8 commander Matthew Dominick, Mike Barratt, Jeanette Epps and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, launched to the International Space Station last March. They had planned to undock Monday, returning to Earth to close out a 217-day mission.
The projected path of Hurricane Milton as forecast by the National Hurricane Centere at 2 p.m. EDT Sunday.
National Weather Service
But NASA announced Sunday their departure would be delayed to at least Thursday because of expected bad weather. Crew Dragon ferry ships require calm winds and seas in the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean to permit a safe splashdown.
As for the Falcon 9, the FAA clearance only applied to the Hera launch while the agency continues overseeing an investigation into what caused a Falcon 9 second stage to malfunction Sept. 28 and miss its targeted re-entry point into Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.
SpaceX routinely sends spent second stages into the atmosphere for destructive breakups at the end of their missions to prevent possible collisions or other problems that might add to the space debris already in low-Earth orbit.
The FAA wants to make sure the problem is understood and corrected so future re-entries are carried out as planned, ensuring any debris that survives re-entry heating will splash down harmlessly in targeted ocean impact “footprints,” well away from shipping lanes and populated areas.
The second stage being used for the Hera mission will boost the space probe into deep space, using all of its propellant in the process. It will not return to Earth, so a malfunction, should one occur, would pose no safety threat.
“The FAA has determined that the absence of a second stage reentry for this mission adequately mitigates the primary risk to the public in the event of a reoccurrance of the mishap experienced with the Crew-9 mission,” the agency said in a statement, referring to the most recent Falcon 9flight.
An artist’s impression of NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft exploring Jupiter’s ice-covered moon Europa where a habitable ocean might be hidden beneath the frozen crust.
NASA
“Safety will drive the timeline for the FAA to complete its review of SpaceX’s Crew-9 mishap investigation report and when the agency will authorize Falcon 9 to return to regular operations,” the statement concluded.
The FAA did not address plans to launch the Europa Clipper atop a Falcon Heavy rocket Thursday for its long-awaited mission to Jupiter and its ice-covered moon Europa.
Like the Hera mission, the Clipper’s upper stage, the same one used for all Falcon-family rockets, will not return to Earth. Instead, it will burn all of its propellants to accelerate the probe to an Earth-escape velocity of 25,000 mph.
But FAA clearance to proceed, assuming it comes in time, likely will be a moot point, at least in the near term. It is unlikely the Clipper and its Falcon Heavy rocket will be moved to the Kennedy Space Center launch pad until after Milton has passed through the area.
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News.
SpaceX launched the rescue mission on Saturday with a downsized crew of two astronauts and two empty seats reserved for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who will return next year. The Dragon capsule docked in darkness as the two craft soared 265 miles (426 kilometers) above Botswana.
NASA switched Wilmore and Williams to SpaceX following concerns over the safety of their Boeing Starliner capsule. It was the first Starliner test flight with a crew, and NASA decided the thruster failures and helium leaks that cropped up after liftoff were too serious and poorly understood to risk the test pilots’ return. So Starliner returned to Earth empty earlier this month.
The Dragon carrying NASA’s Nick Hague and the Russian Space Agency’s Alexander Gorbunov will remain at the space station until February, turning what should have been a weeklong trip for Wilmore and Williams into a mission lasting more than eight months.
Two NASA astronauts were pulled from the mission to make room for Wilmore and Williams on the return leg.
NASA likes to replace its station crews every six months or so. SpaceX has provided the taxi service since the company’s first astronaut flight in 2020. NASA also hired Boeing for ferry flights after the space shuttles were retired, but flawed software and other Starliner issues led to years of delays and more than $1 billion in repairs.
Starliner inspections are underway at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, with post-flight reviews of data set to begin this week.
“We’re a long way from saying, ‘Hey, we’re writing off Boeing,’” NASA’s associate administrator Jim Free said at a pre-launch briefing.
The arrival of two fresh astronauts means the four who have been up there since March can now return to Earth in their own SpaceX capsule in just over a week. Their stay was extended a month because of the Starliner turmoil.
Although Saturday’s liftoff went well, SpaceX said the rocket’s spent upper stage ended up outside its targeted impact zone in the Pacific because of a bad engine firing. The company has halted all Falcon launches until it figures out what went wrong.
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A day after launching from the Kennedy Space Center, a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft caught up with the International Space Station and moved in for docking Sunday, bringing a NASA astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut to the outpost to join two Starliner astronauts for a five-month tour of duty.
The rendezvous came amid word from SpaceX that it’s suspending Falcon 9 launches while engineers work to figure out what caused the crew’s Falcon 9 upper stage to misfire Saturday, after the Crew Dragon was released to fly on its own, resulting in an off-target re-entry over the Pacific Ocean.
A new privately financed camera recently mounted on the International Space Station to bring high-resolution space scenes to the public captured spectacular views of the Crew Dragon after it docked at the station’s forward port.
Sen
SpaceX said in a post on the social media platform X that the second stage “experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn. As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area. We will resume launching after we better understand root cause.”
It was the second Falcon 9 upper stage anomaly in less than three months and the third failure counting a first stage landing mishap. It’s not yet known what impact, if any, the latest problem might have on downstream flights, including two high-priority October launches to send NASA and European Space Agency probes on voyages to Jupiter and an asteroid.
After today’s successful launch of Crew-9, Falcon 9’s second stage was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn. As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area.
But the anomaly had no impact on the Crew Dragon’s 28-hour rendezvous with the space station, and the ferry ship, carrying commander Nick Hague and cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, docked at the lab’s forward port at 5:30 p.m. EDT as the two spacecraft sailed 265 miles above southern Africa.
Standing by to welcome Hague and Gorbunov aboard were Starliner commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and pilot Sunita Williams, now serving as commander of the space station, along with Soyuz MS-26/72S commander Aleksey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Don Pettit.
Hague, Gorbunov, Wilmore and Williams will replace Crew 8 commander Matthew Dominick, Mike Barratt, Jeanette Epps and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin when they return to Earth around Oct. 7 to wrap up a 217-day stay in space.
Wilmore and Williams took off on the Starliner’s first piloted test flight, a mission expected to last a little more than a week, on June 5. During rendezvous with the space station the day after launch, multiple helium leaks in the ship’s propulsion system were detected and five maneuvering jets failed to operate properly.
Hague, left, and Gorbunov monitor Crew Dragon cockpit displays moments after docking at the International Space Station.
SpaceX/NASA
NASA and Boeing spent the next three months carrying out tests and analyses to determine if the Starliner could safely bring its crew back to Earth. In the end, NASA managers decided to keep Wilmore and Williams aboard the station and to bring the Starliner down without its crew.
They made that decision knowing the two astronauts could come home aboard the Crew Dragon launched Saturday. Two Crew 9 astronauts — Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson — were removed from the crew to provide seats for Wilmore and Williams when Hague and Gorbunov return to Earth in February.
When they finally get home, Wilmore and Williams will have logged 262 days in space compared to five months for Hague and Gorbunov.
The Crew 9 flight was SpaceX’s 95th launch so far this year. And it was the company’s third flight in less than three months to run into problems.
The Crew Dragon on final approach to the International Space Station.
NASA
SpaceX recovers, refurbishes and relaunches Falcon 9 first stage boosters, which can land in California, Florida or aboard off-shore droneships. The second stages are not recovered.
Instead, SpaceX commands upper stage engine firings to drive the stages back into the atmosphere for a destructive breakup, making sure any debris falls into an ocean well away from shipping lanes or populated areas.
By taking Falcon 9 upper stages out of orbit after their missions, SpaceX ensures they will never pose a collision risk with other spacecraft or add to the space debris already in low-Earth orbit.
During launch of 20 Starlink internet satellites on July 11, the Falcon 9’s second stage malfunctioned and failed to complete a “burn” needed to reach the proper orbit. Stuck in a lower-than-planned orbit, all 20 satellites fell back into the atmosphere and burned up.
SpaceX briefly suspended flights at the direction of the Federal Aviation Administration, but the problem was quickly identified and fixed, and the company was allowed to resume flights while the investigation continued.
Then, during another Starlink launch on Aug. 28, a Falcon 9 first stage descending to toward landing crashed onto the deck of an off-shore drone ship. SpaceX has not provided any information about what went wrong or what, if any, corrective actions were required, but flights resumed three days later.
SpaceX provided no details about the off-target re-entry of the Crew Dragon’s upper stage other than the post late Saturday on X.
The nozzle of the Falcon 9’s second stage Merlin engine glows red while boosting the Crew 9 spacecraft to the planned orbit for a rendezvous with the International Space Station. The firing went well and the Crew Dragon capsule was safely sent on its way. But the second stage malfunctioned during a subsequent engine firing to drive the rocket into the atmosphere.
SpaceX
Going into Saturday’s launch, SpaceX was planning to launch 20 OneWeb broadband satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California this week, followed by a Starlink launch from Cape Canaveral. Both flights are now on hold.
More important, a Falcon 9 will be used to launch the European Space Agency’s $390 million Hera asteroid probe from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station around Oct. 7, followed by launch of NASA’s $5.2 billion Europa Clipper Jupiter probe from the Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 10.
Hera is bound for the asteroid Didymos and its moon Dimorphos, a small body that NASA’s DART probe crashed into in 2022. Hera will study the system in detail to determine how the moon’s structure and orbit were changed by the impact. A primary goal is to learn more about how an asteroid threatening Earth some day might be safely diverted.
The Europa Clipper is a “flagship” mission to explore Jupiter’s ice-covered moon Europa and to determine the habitability of a vast sub-surface ocean. It is the largest planetary probe ever built, requiring a powerful Falcon Heavy rocket, made up of three strapped-together Falcon 9 first stages and a single upper stage, to send it on its way.
Both missions must get off the ground during relatively short “planetary” launch windows defined by the positions of Earth, Mars, Jupiter and the asteroids. Hera’s window opens on Oct. 7 and closes on Oct. 25. The Europa Clipper launch window opens on Oct. 10 and runs through Nov. 6.
Missing a planetary window can result in long, costly delays while while Earth, Jupiter, the asteroids and Mars, needed for gravity assist flybys, return to favorable orbital positions enabling launch.
Armando Piloto, a senior manager with the Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center, said the Falcon Heavy stages used for the Europa Clipper mission will not be recovered. Instead, they will consume all of their propellants to achieve the velocity needed to send the probe on a five-year voyage to Jupiter.
“I’ll point out that during the burn of the second stage, the vehicle with the spacecraft, will be traveling approximately 25,000 miles per hour, which will be the fastest speed for a Falcon second stage ever for Europa Clipper,” he said during a recent briefing.
Given SpaceX’s rapid recoveries after the July and August malfunctions, the upper stage re-entry anomaly Saturday presumably will be resolved in time to get the Europa Clipper and Hera missions off the ground within their launch windows. But that will depend on the results of the latest failure investigation.
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News.
US space officials do not like to talk about the perils of flying astronauts on the aging International Space Station, elements of which are now more than a quarter of a century old.
However, a new report confirms that NASA managers responsible for operating the space station are seriously concerned about a small Russian part of the station, essentially a tunnel that connects a larger module to a docking port, which is leaking.
Russian and US officials have known that this small PrK module, which lies between a Progress spacecraft airlock and the Zvezda module, has been leaking since September 2019. A new report, published Thursday by NASA’s inspector general, provides details not previously released by the space agency that underline the severity of the problem.
New Details About the Leak
For example, in February of this year NASA identified an increase in the leak rate from less than 1 pound of atmosphere a day to 2.4 pounds a day, and in April this rate increased to 3.7 pounds a day. Despite years of investigation, neither Russian nor US officials have identified the underlying cause of the leak.
“Although the root cause of the leak remains unknown, both agencies have narrowed their focus to internal and external welds,” the report, signed by Deputy Inspector General George A. Scott, states.
The plan to mitigate the risk is to keep the hatch on the Zvezda module leading to the PrK tunnel closed. Eventually, if the leak worsens further, this hatch might need to be closed permanently, reducing the number of Russian docking ports on the space station from four to three.
Publicly, NASA has sought to minimize concerns about the cracking issue because it remains, to date, confined to the PrK tunnel and has not spread to other parts of the station. Nevertheless, Ars reported in June that the cracking issue has reached the highest level of concern on the space agency’s 5×5 “risk matrix” to classify the likelihood and consequence of risks to spaceflight activities. The Russian leaks are now classified as a “5” both in terms of high likelihood and high consequence.
At the time, NASA would not comment on, or confirm, the space agency’s concerns about the risk matrix rating. However, the new report confirms the agency’s concerns.
“In May and June 2024, ISS Program and Roscosmos officials met to discuss heightened concerns with the increased leak rate,” the inspector general’s report states. “The ISS Program subsequently elevated the Service Module Transfer Tunnel leak risk to the highest level of risk in its risk management system. According to NASA, Roscosmos is confident they will be able to monitor and close the hatch to the Service Module prior to the leak rate reaching an untenable level. However, NASA and Roscosmos have not reached an agreement on the point at which the leak rate is untenable.”
An Uncertain Future in Low Earth Orbit
The report comes as NASA is considering the future of the space station. The US space agency and Russia have an agreement to continue flying the station through 2028, and NASA would like to extend operations to 2030. NASA had anticipated that it would agree to this extension more than a year ago, but as of yet no agreement has been finalized.
Once the station reaches the end of its life, NASA intends to transition its activities in low Earth orbit onto private space stations, and it has funded initial development work by Axiom Space, Northrop Grumman, Blue Origin, and Voyager Space. Northrop has since dropped out of the competition—determining that it would not be a profitable business. There is general uncertainty as to whether any of the private space station operators will be ready in 2030.
NASA’s other potential option is extending the life of the space station beyond 2030, but this would require a lot of work to ensure the space station’s structure remains viable and yet another extension agreement with Russia. The US partnership with that nation has been severely strained by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Extending the ISS past 2030 will require significant funding to operate and maintain the station, acceptance of increased risk stemming from its components and aging structures, and assurances of continued support from NASA’s international partners,” the new report states. “Further complicating matters is the likelihood that NASA may continue to face a flat or reduced budget, inflation, and supply chain challenges.”
The two Starliner astronauts said Friday they had no regrets about NASA’s decision to extend their mission and to bring their spacecraft back to Earth without them, saying they had turned the page and were enjoying the transition to full-time space station astronauts.
Starliner commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams, both former Navy test pilots and veterans of earlier stays aboard the International Space Station, spoke with reporters from orbit Friday, the 100th day of a mission originally expected to last a little more than a week.
On their 100th day in space, Starliner commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams field questions from reporters while floating in the International Space Station’s Destiny laboratory module.
NASA TV
“There’s one thing that I try not to fret over, things that I can’t control,” Wilmore said, floating beside Williams in the station’s Destiny lab module. “I’m not going to fret over it. There’s no benefit to it at all.
“So my transition (psychologically), maybe it wasn’t instantaneous, but it was pretty close. If I can’t affect it, if there’s nothing we can do, there’s nothing we can do. So we march forward, carry out the plan of the day.”
Williams agreed, saying “that’s what we do. We’re professionals.”
“I have to say, though, in the back of my mind, you know, there’s folks on the ground who had some plans, right? Like my family, to spend some time with my mom, and I think I was fretting more about that, the things that we had sort of all talked about for this fall and this winter,” Williams said.
“But you know what? everybody is on board and is supporting us while we’re up here. So I think that fret went away real quick. We’re here, and we’re going to be the best crewmates that we can be for our for our (space station) crewmates up here.”
During rendezvous with the lab the next day, five reaction control system thrusters failed to operate properly and four helium leaks in the propulsion pressurization system were detected in addition to a small leak that was spotted before launch.
NASA and Boeing engineers and managers spent the next three months analyzing the problems to determine if the Starliner could safely bring Wilmore and Williams back to Earth. Boeing argued the test data showed it could, but NASA managers were not convinced.
In the end, agency managers opted to keep the two astronauts aboard the station for an extended stay and to bring the Starliner down, without its crew, on Sept. 7. The ship’s re-entry and landing went off without a hitch, vindicating Boeing’s faith in the spacecraft.
Wilmore and Williams both said the entire station crew got up early to watch the Starliner’s return to Earth and Wilmore said he was thrilled at the successful landing. But he did not question NASA’s decision.
Wilmore and Williams both said they enjoy working aboard the space station, especially weightlessness. Wilmore gave an impromptu demonstration during the crew’s news conference.
NASA TV
“It was wonderful that it made it back, and the fact that we weren’t on it didn’t even come into mind at all,” Wilmore said. “It was never like, oh, we shouldn’t… no, not at all. The decision was made (and) we go forward with the plan of the day.”
But he said if NASA had had more time to investigate the helium leaks and thruster problems, he and Williams might have been able to return aboard the Starliner as originally planned.
“I think the data could have gotten (us) there,” he said. “We could have gotten to the point, I believe, where we could have returned on Starliner.”
But because of other spacecraft and crews flying to and from the space station this month, “we just did not have enough time to get to the end of the timeline where we could say that we were going to come back with it. I think we’d have gotten there, but we just ran out of time.”
Wilmore and Williams are not the first astronauts who have had to face an extended mission.
NASA astronaut Frank Rubio faced a similar dilemma in 2022 when his six-month stay aboard the station was extended to more than a full year because of problems with the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that carried him to orbit.
“I think going from six months to 12 months is tough, but it’s not as tough as going from eight days to eight months,” Rubio said in an interview with CBS News.
“Certainly, there’s a little part of you that’s disappointed,” he said. “It’s okay to acknowledge that. But you also can’t mope around for the entire time, right? … You just have to kind of dedicate and rededicate yourself to the mission.”
And that’s exactly what Wilmore and Williams said they were doing.
The Starliner astronauts have joined the station’s full-time crew and will now come home in late February, hitching a ride back aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft with Crew 9 commander Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov. The Crew 9 flight is scheduled for launch Sept. 25.
The Crew Dragon normally launches with four station fliers aboard, but NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson were bumped from the upcoming flight to provide return seats for Wilmore and Williams. When they return to Earth in late February with Hague and Gorbunov, the Starliner astronauts will have logged 262 days off planet.
“We’re both Navy, we’ve both been on deployments,” Williams said. “We’re not surprised when deployments get changed. Our families are used to that as well. So that’s not a humongous surprise.”
In this case, NASA “made the right decisions, and we’re here. That’s how things go in this business. It’s risky, and that’s how it goes in the business.”
On a more positive note, she added, she and Wilmore are “excited to fly in two different spacecraft.”
“We’re testers, that’s what we do, we look at different aircraft, spacecraft, whatever. … We wanted to take Starliner to the completion and land it back on land at home. But you have to turn the page and look at the next opportunity. We’ll come back with some evaluations of both spacecraft, and I think we’re pretty fortunate for that.”
And in the meantime, it’s not all work and no play. Williams, who logged 322 days aboard the space station on two earlier visits, said living aboard the orbital lab “is my happy place.”
“It’s very it’s very peaceful up here,” she said. “A lot of times there’s a lot of work that’s going on, but it also gives you a time to be a little introspective, a little change (in) your perspective on how we do things on Earth.
“It really is difficult for me to imagine people on Earth not getting along together. It’s the one planet we have, and we should all really be happy that we’re there together, because that’s it. That’s our place. … It just changes your perspective.”
And then, there are sports. Wilmore, raised in Mt. Juliet, Tenn., just outside Nashville, is an ardent Southeastern Conference football fan. He told an ESPN reporter “if you’re looking for a guest picker for ‘College Game Day,’ give me a call. Also, I’ve been asked several times, yes, I do have the SEC Network.”
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News.
On Saturday NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore noticed some strange noises emanating from a speaker inside the Starliner spacecraft.
“I’ve got a question about Starliner,” Wilmore radioed down to Mission Control, at Johnson Space Center in Houston. “There’s a strange noise coming through the speaker … I don’t know what’s making it.”
Wilmore said he was not sure if there was some oddity in the connection between the station and the spacecraft causing the noise, or something else. He asked the flight controllers in Houston to see if they could listen to the audio inside the spacecraft. A few minutes later, Mission Control radioed back that they were linked via “hardline” to listen to audio inside Starliner, which has now been docked to the International Space Station for nearly three months.
Wilmore, apparently floating in Starliner, then put his microphone up to the speaker inside Starliner. Shortly thereafter, there was an audible pinging that was quite distinctive. “Alright Butch, that one came through,” Mission control radioed up to Wilmore. “It was kind of like a pulsing noise, almost like a sonar ping.”
Listen to a recording of the noises heard by Butch Wilmore.
“I’ll do it one more time, and I’ll let y’all scratch your heads and see if you can figure out what’s going on,” Wilmore replied. The odd, sonar-like audio then repeated itself. “Alright, over to you. Call us if you figure it out.”
A Space Oddity
A recording of this audio, and Wilmore’s conversation with Mission Control, was captured and shared by a Michigan-based meteorologist named Rob Dale.
It was not immediately clear what was causing the odd, and somewhat eerie noise. As Starliner flies to the space station, it maintains communications with the space station via a radio frequency system. Once docked, however, there is a hardline umbilical that carries audio.
Astronauts notice such oddities in space from time to time. For example, during China’s first human spaceflight int 2003, astronaut Yang Liwei said he heard what sounded like an iron bucket being knocked by a wooden hammer while in orbit. Later, scientists realized the noise was due to small deformations in the spacecraft due to a difference in pressure between its inner and outer walls.
This weekend’s sonar-like noises most likely have a benign cause, and Wilmore certainly did not sound frazzled. But the odd noises are worth noting given the challenges that Boeing and NASA have had with the debut crewed flight of Starliner, including substantial helium leaks in flight, and failing thrusters. NASA announced a week ago that, due to uncertainty about the flyability of Starliner, it would come home without its original crew of Wilmore and Suni Williams.
Starliner is now due to fly back autonomously to Earth on Friday, September 6. Wilmore and Williams will return to Earth next February, flying aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft scheduled to launch with just two astronauts later this month.
NASA has announced that astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams will return to Earth next February aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft.
The announcement at a press conference today caps off monthsofspeculation about the best plan to safely bring the astronauts home after malfunctions with their ride, Boeing’s Starliner capsule, postponed their departure from the International Space Station in June. Now, NASA has decided that Starliner will return home in September without Wilmore and Williams, who will stay on with the existing station crew and will return on SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission next year.
“Boeing has worked very hard with NASA to get the necessary data to make this decision,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said at the briefing. “We want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS.”
Wilmore and Williams launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on June 5, becoming the first astronauts to perform a crewed test flight of Starliner, a capsule developed by Boeing to ferry people to and from the ISS.
During the approach to the station, five of Starliner’s 28 thrusters failed to function. The crew was able to restore four of them and safely docked with the station, where they discovered Starliner’s propulsion system was also leaking helium from multiple places.
Boeing and NASA have been conducting ground tests of analog equipment to better understand the problem with the thrusters and helium leaks. Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator, cited “uncertainty” with the “physics going on in the thrusters” as the core reason for postponing the return trip for Wilmore and Williams.
“This has not been an easy decision,” Free added. “But it is absolutely the right one.”
Wilmore and Williams were originally scheduled to stay onboard the ISS for about a week before returning to Earth in Starliner. But their return has been delayed for more than two months as mission planners struggled to isolate the cause of the thruster problems and assess the risks of using Starliner for the flight home. NASA’s plan will leave them on ISS for a total of eight months, longer than the typical six-month stay but not unprecedented.
Instead of sending a four-person crew to the ISS onboard SpaceX’s Dragon in September as planned, two of the seats on the capsule will be left open for Wilmore and Williams. New Dragon spacesuits for the astronauts, along with other necessary supplies, will be brought to the station in the coming months.
NASA has emphasized that Wilmore and Williams have not been “stranded,” nor are they in any danger. Likewise, the astronauts have publicly approached the extended stay as a lucky break that lets them rack up more time in space.
“We are having a great time here on ISS,” Williams told reporters in a July call from the ISS. “You know, Butch and I have been up here before, and it feels like coming back home. It feels good to float around. It feels good to be in space and work up here with the International Space Station team.”
Astronauts on board the International Space Station have a lot of serious business to handle each day. But even astronauts need time for rest and relaxation. And if they like, they can watch a movie or TV show. What’s the selection like 250 feet above the Earth? Surprisingly good, if you can believe it.
Way back in 2016, Gizmodo submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to NASA for the movies and TV shows that were available to watch on the ISS. The list was a fascinating little peek into life for astronauts when they’ve got some downtime. So we recently decided to submit a new FOIA request to learn what new movies and TV shows may be streaming up there.
Today, we’re starting with just the list of TV shows. What’s new? A lot, as it turns out. There are, of course, space-themed shows like Hulu’s The First with Sean Penn from 2018, the critically acclaimed alt-history drama For All Mankind, and the Trump-era comedy Space Force. Other new series include Book of Bobba Fett, The Crown, and the cooking show Chopped.
Other sci-fi series include Andor, Star Trek Discovery, Firefly, and Battlestar Galactica. But there are also plenty of Earth-bound sitcoms from the past few decades like Friends, Young Sheldon, How I Met Your Mother, and Big Bang Theory. Astronauts also can watch HBO shows like Westworld, True Detective, and Game of Thrones, among others.
The ISS also has Apple shows like Succession, Netflix shows like Stranger Things, and Disney+ shows like Loki. Typically, the shows appear to have most seasons that have been released, but there are a few exceptions. For example, the ISS is loaded with seasons one, two, and four of Mr. Robot. Where’s season three? That part isn’t clear.
There are also documentary series like When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions from 2008, From the Earth to the Moon from 1998, and The Last Days of World War II from 2005.
Here’s the complete list of TV shows available for astronauts to watch on the ISS:
1883 (Season 1)
The Americans (Seasons 1‐4)
Among the Stars
Andor (Season 1)
Arrested Development (Seasons 1-3)
A Series of Unfortunate Events (Seasons 1-3)
Band of Brothers
Banff Film Festival World Tour
Battlestar Galactica (Seasons 1-4)
Better Call Saul (Seasons 1-6)
Big Bang Theory (Seasons 1-8)
Big Little Lies (Seasons 1-2)
Blackadder (Seasons 1‐4)
Breaking Bad (Seasons 1-6)
Cosmos
Chopped (Season 51)
The Chosen (Seasons 1 ‐3)
Countdown: Inspiration 4 Mission to Space
The Crown (Seasons 1-4)
Deadwood (Seasons 1-3)
Dead to Me (Seasons 1-2)
The Expanse (Seasons 1‐6)
Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Season 1)
Firefly
The First (Season 1)
Fixer Upper (Seasons 1‐5)
For All Mankind (Seasons 1‐3)
Friends (Seasons 6‐10)
Friends the Reunion
Friday Night Lights (Seasons 1‐5)
From the Earth to the Moon
Game of Thrones (Seasons 1-8)
Godless (Season 1)
The Handmaid’s Tale (Seasons 1-2)
House of the Dragon (Season 1)
How I Became Russian
How I Met Your Mother (Seasons 1‐8)
Jack Ryan (Seasons 1-2)
Kaamelott
Killing Eve (Seasons 1‐3)
The Last Dance
The Last Days of World War II
Le Bureau
Loki (Season 1)
Lonesome Dove
Longmire (Seasons 1‐6)
The Lord of the Rings the Rings of Power (Season 1)
Lost in Space (Seasons 1-2)
The Mandalorian (Seasons 1-2)
Modern Family (Seasons 1-11)
Mr. Robot (Seasons 1-2, 4)
The Office (Seasons 1-9)
Parks and Recreation (Seasons 1-7)
Peaky Blinders (Season 1)
The Queen’s Gambit
ReelRock
The Right Stuff (Season 1)
Schtt’s Creek (Seasons 3-6)
Seinfeld (Season 1‐9)
Severance (Season 1)
Shackleton
Sherlock (Seasons 1‐3)
Silicon Valley (Season 1‐6)
Space Force (Season 1-2)
Squid Game (Season 1)
Star Trek Discovery (Seasons 1‐3)
Star Trek Picard
Stranger Things (Seasons 1‐4)
Succession (Season 2)
Ted Lasso (Seasons 1‐3)
The Book of Boba Fett (Season 1)
The Terror
The Witcher (Seasons 1-2)
True Detective (Season 1)
Wandavision (Season 1)
Watchmen (Season 1)
Westworld (Seasons 1‐3)
When We Left The Earth
Yellowstone (Seasons 1‐4)
Young Sheldon (Season 6)
Do you spot anything notable? Anything you think would be funny to watch in space, for one reason or another? Stay tuned as we check out the enormous collection of movies that astronauts can watch on the ISS.
SpaceX is building a souped-up version of its cargo Dragon spacecraft to drive the International Space Station out of orbit for a controlled re-entry and breakup over an uninhabited stretch of ocean when the lab is finally retired in the 2030 timeframe, NASA and company officials said Wednesday.
The ISS Deorbit Vehicle, or DV, will be a custom-built, one-of-a-kind spacecraft needed to make sure the space station re-enters the atmosphere at the precise place and in the proper orientation to insure any wreckage that survives the 3,000-degree heat of re-entry will crash harmlessly into the sea.
An artist’s impression of SpaceX’s ISS Deorbit Vehicle pushing the lab toward a controlled re-entry and breakup in the 2030 timeframe, after a formal decision to retire the lab complex after three decades of operation.
SpaceX
In late June, NASA awarded SpaceX a contract valued at up to $843 million to build the deorbit vehicle, which will be owned and operated by the space agency. The heavy-lift rocket needed to launch it has not yet been selected, but NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has asked Congress for a total of about $1.5 billion to carry out the entire de-orbit operation.
And it is no trivial matter. The long axis of the space station, made up of multiple pressurized modules where visiting crews live and work, measures 218 feet long. The lab’s solar array power and cooling truss, mounted at right angles to the long axis, stretches 310 feet from end to end, longer than a U.S. football field.
The entire lab complex has a combined mass of 925,000 pounds and it’s moving through space at some 17,100 mph, or 84 football fields per second.
To carefully lower its altitude for a controlled re-entry, the DV will carry some 35,000 pounds of propellant powering 46 Draco rocket engines, 30 of which will be mounted in an extended trunk section to carry out the bulk of the deorbit maneuvers.
“When we do make the decision to deorbit station, we’ll launch the U.S. DV about one-and-a-half years before the final re-entry burn,” said Dana Weigel, the ISS program manager at the Johnson Space Center.
“We’ll dock it to the forward port, we will do a series of checkouts and then once we’re convinced that everything looks healthy and we’re ready, we’ll allow ISS to begin drifting down.”
The final space station crew will remain on board until periodic thruster firings and ever increasing “drag” in the extreme upper atmosphere combine to lower the lab to an altitude of about 205 miles. That milestone will be reached about six months before the final re-entry procedure.
As the by-then-uncrewed ISS reaches an altitude of about 140 miles, the DV “will perform a series of burns to set us up for that final deorbit,” Weigel said. “And then four days later, it will do the final re-entry burn.”
The space station’s large but relatively flimsy solar arrays will break off and burn up first, along with antennas, radiator panels and other appendages.
A recent shot of the International Space Station captured by a Maxar commercial imaging satellite. Boeing’s Starliner capsule can be seen at center, lower right, extending from the station’s forward docking port. SpaceX’s Deorbit Vehicle will dock to that same forward port to safely push the lab out of orbit when the program comes to an end around 2030.
Maxar
More massive components — modules and the lab’s huge power truss — also will break apart in the hellish high-speed descent, but chunks as large as a small car are expected to survive all the way to ocean splashdown along a narrow 1,200-mile-long “footprint.”
Remote areas of the South Pacific Ocean offer unpopulated splashdown zones, although a final target has not yet been specified.
To achieve a precisely targeted entry, “the deorbit vehicle will need six times the usable propellant and three to four times the power generation and storage of today’s Dragon spacecraft,” said Sarah Walker, a senior manager at SpaceX.
“It needs enough fuel on board not just to complete the primary mission but also to operate in orbit in partnership with the space station for about 18 months. Then at the right time, it will perform a complex series of actions over several days to deorbit the International Space Station.”
A deorbit spacecraft of some sort is needed because even at the space station’s current altitude of 260 miles, trace amounts of the atmosphere still exist. As the station flies through that tenuous material at nearly 5 miles per second, collisions with those particles act to slow the craft every so slightly in a phenomenon known as atmospheric drag.
Over the life of the program, periodic thruster firings have been carried out by engines in Russian modules or attached Progress cargo ships to boost the lab’s altitude as needed to offset the effects of drag. More recently, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo ships have added modest reboost capability.
Without those carefully planned firings, the station eventually would crash back into the lower atmosphere on its own.
The station flies over every point on Earth between 51.6 degrees north and south latitude, covering the entire planet between London and the tip of South America. In an uncontrolled re-entry, station debris that survived entry heating could hit the surface anywhere in that area.
While the odds of impacts in a populated area are relatively small, nothing as massive as the space station has ever re-entered and fallen to Earth, and NASA is taking no chances.
NASA and its station partners — the European, Russian, Canadian and Japanese space agencies — planned from the beginning to deliberately drive the lab into the atmosphere at the end of its life to ensure breakup over an uninhabited stretch of ocean.
The original plan was to use thrusters in multiple Russian Progress cargo ships to lower the lab’s altitude and set up a targeted fall to Earth.
“Early on in the station planning, we had considered doing the deorbit through the use of three Progress vehicles,” Weigel said. “But the Roscosmos segment was not designed to control three Progress vehicles at one time. So that presented a bit of a challenge.
“And also, the capability wasn’t quite what we really needed for the size of station. So we jointly agreed together to go have U.S. industry take a look at what we could do on our side for the deorbit.”
Last year, NASA sought industry proposals and two companies responded: SpaceX and Northrop Grumman. The agency announced last week that SpaceX had won the contract.
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket was readied for blastoff Wednesday in a third attempt to get Boeing’s long-delayed Starliner crew capsule into orbit for its first piloted test flight, a cruise to the International Space Station.
NASA commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams, both former Navy test pilots, planned to strap in just after 8 a.m. EDT to await liftoff at 10:52 a.m. That’s roughly the moment Earth’s rotation carries the pad into alignment with the space station’s orbit — a requirement for rendezvous missions.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket stands poised for launch at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to put Boeing’s Starliner astronaut ferry ship into orbit for its first piloted test flight.
United Launch Alliance
Once in orbit, the astronauts plan to test the Starliner’s manual controls before closely monitoring an automated 25-hour rendezvous with the station, catching up from behind and below before moving in for docking at the lab’s forward port at 12:15 p.m. Thursday. If all goes well, the Starliner and its crew will return to Earth on June 14.
The long-awaited flight marks the first launch of an Atlas 5 with astronauts aboard and the first for the Atlas family of rockets since astronaut Gordon Cooper took off on the Mercury program’s final flight 61 years ago.
It also marks the first piloted flight of the Starliner, Boeing’s answer to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, an already operational, less expensive spacecraft that has carried 50 astronauts, cosmonauts and civilians into orbit in 13 flights, 12 of them to the space station, since an initial piloted test flight in May 2020.
NASA ordered two spacecraft from different vendors to ensure uninterrupted transportation to and from the space station even if a problem of some sort grounded one company’s ferry ship. Despite a larger NASA contract, Boeing’s Starliner is four years behind SpaceX getting astronauts to space.
But Wilmore and Williams say the spacecraft is now safer and more capable thanks to numerous upgrades and fixes.
Astronauts Sunita Williams, left, and Barry “Butch” Wilmore plan to put Boeing’s Starliner capsule through its paces on the way to and from the International Space Station.
NASA
“I’m not going to say it’s been easy. It’s a little bit of (an) emotional roller coaster,” Williams said before the crew’s first launch attempt. But, she added, “we knew we would get here eventually. It’s a solid spacecraft. I don’t think I would really want to be in any other place right now.”
The final push to orbit was held up by last-minute trouble with the Atlas 5, the Starliner and a launch pad computer system.
A May 6 launch try was derailed by a suspect pressure relief valve in the Atlas 5’s Centaur upper stage. The valve was replaced, but concern about a small helium leak in the Starliner’s propulsion system delayed a second attempt to June 1.
The second time around, trouble with one of three ground computers used to orchestrate the final minutes of the countdown triggered another scrub. The computer hardware was replaced, clearing the way for a third launch try Wednesday.
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News.
The launch of Boeing’s star-crossed Starliner spacecraft on its first piloted test flight is slipping to at least June 1 to give engineers more time to assess a small-but-persistent helium leak in the capsule’s propulsion system, and its potential impact across all phases of flight, NASA announced Wednesday.
Already years behind schedule and more than $1 billion over budget, the Starliner’s road to launch has been surprisingly rocky, with multiple problems leading up to its first Crew Flight Test, which is now slipping nearly a month beyond its May 6 target.
Launch of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, seen here earlier this month atop its United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, is on hold until at least June 1 while engineers carry out an extended analysis of a small-but-persistent helium leak in the ship’s propulsion system.
United Launch Alliance
That launch attempt was called off because of unrelated trouble with a valve in the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket that was quickly corrected. But the helium leak in the Starliner’s service module, detected during the May 6 countdown, has proven to be more difficult to resolve to everyone’s satisfaction.
At the time, NASA officials said the leak was within acceptable limits and would not have triggered a launch scrub on its own. But after additional inspections — and an unsuccessful attempt to eliminate the leak by tightening bolts in a flange where it appeared to be originating — mission managers began a more comprehensive analysis.
The helium helps pressurize the spacecraft’s propulsion system, and if too much gas leaks away — the thrusters used for launch aborts, maneuvers in orbit to rendezvous with the International Space Station, and departure and re-entry — all could be affected. While the leak appears to be stable, NASA is looking for “flight rationale” showing it won’t worsen in flight.
“As part of this work, and unrelated to the current leak, which remains stable, teams are in the process of completing a follow-on propulsion system assessment to understand potential helium system impacts on some Starliner return scenarios,” NASA said in a statement late Wednesday.
That will be the subject of a second flight readiness review in the next several days. In the meantime, mission commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams will remain at the Johnson Space Center practicing procedures in high fidelity flight simulators. They’ll fly back to Florida next week if mission managers clear the Starliner for launch.
A launch on June 1 — the same day SpaceX may be targeting for the next flight of its Super Heavy-Starship rocket — would be set for 12:25 p.m. EDT, roughly the moment Earth’s rotation carries Pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida into the plane of the space station’s orbit.
If all goes well, the crew would dock at the lab’s forward port on June 2 and return to Earth with a landing at White Sands, New Mexico, on June 10. Assuming no major problems, NASA hopes to certify the Starliner for operational crew rotation flights to the station starting next year, alternating with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft.
But that will require a full “human rating certification” for the Starliner, and that will depend on the results of the Crew Flight Test.
“It has been important that we take our time to understand all the complexities of each issue, including the redundant capabilities of the Starliner propulsion system and any implications to our interim human rating certification,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
“We will launch Butch and Suni on this test mission after the entire community has reviewed the teams’ progress and flight rationale” at the upcoming flight readiness review, Stich added.
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News.
The launch of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket carrying Boeing’s hard-luck Starliner capsule has been delayed another four days, from Friday to next Tuesday, to give engineers time to make sure a small helium leak in the crew ship’s propulsion system has been resolved, officials said Tuesday.
Liftoff from pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is now targeted for 4:43 p.m. EDT May 21, setting up a docking at the International Space Station the following afternoon. The flight is expected to conclude with a landing in White Sands, New Mexico, around May 30.
Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule in a processing hangar at the Kennedy Space Center, shortly before it was mounted atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.
William Harwood/CBS News
Mission commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams had hoped to take off on the Starliner’s first piloted flight last Monday. They were in the process of strapping in when the countdown was called off because of trouble with an oxygen pressure relief valve in the rocket’s Centaur upper stage.
Two days later, the Atlas 5 was hauled off the launch pad and back to ULA’s nearby Vertical Integration Facility where the suspect valve was replaced. Tests confirmed the rocket is good to go for another launch try.
The unrelated helium leak in the Starliner’s propellant pressurization system was noted during the countdown last week, but it remained within safe limits for flight. After the Atlas 5 and Starliner were rolled back to the VIF for the oxygen valve replacement, managers decided to take a closer look at the helium issue.
The leak was detected in distribution manifold inside one of four “doghouse” assemblies spaced around the exterior of the Starliner’s drum-shaped service module. Each doghouse features four orbital maneuvering and attitude control — OMAC — thrusters and four small reaction control system maneuvering jets.
Pressurized helium gas is used to push propellants to the rocket motors in each doghouse. The leak was traced to a flange on a single RCS thruster.
Bolts were retorqued and engineers believe the system is flight ready. But managers decided to pressurize the helium lines throughout the spacecraft to make sure the lines are, in fact, leak-free or within acceptable limits.
“As a part of the testing, Boeing will bring the propulsion system up to flight pressurization just as it does prior to launch, and then allow the helium system to vent naturally to validate existing data and strengthen flight rationale,” the company said in a statement.
“Mission teams also completed a thorough review of the data from the May 6 launch attempt and are not tracking any other issues.”
Wilmore and Williams, both veteran Navy test pilots and astronauts with four flights to the station between them, flew back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston last Friday for additional simulator training. They are expected to fly back to Florida late this week to gear up for another launch try.
The Atlas 5 rocket and Starliner capsule at launch pad 41 prior to a May 6 launch delay triggered by an oxygen pressure relief valve in the rocket’s Centaur upper stage and, more recently, by a small helium leak in the Starliner’s service module.
United Launch Alliance
The Starliner is one of two commercially built crew ferry ships ordered by NASA in the wake of the shuttle program’s retirement in 2011. SpaceX won a contract valued at $2.6 billion for development of the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and Boeing was awarded $4.2 billion to develop the Starliner.
The goal was to spur development of independent, commercially-operated spacecraft capable of ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Spacecraft from different vendors will allow NASA to continue sending crews to the space station even if a problem grounds one company’s ship.
SpaceX launched its first two-man crew in 2020. Since then, the company has launched eight NASA-sponsored crew rotation flights to the station, three commercial research missions to the lab and a privately-funded, two-man, two-woman trip to low-Earth orbit. In all, 50 people have flown to space aboard Crew Dragons.
Wilmore and Williams will be the first astronauts to fly aboard a Starliner after a series of technical glitches that included major software problems during an initial unpiloted test flight in December 2019 and corroded propulsion system valves that delayed a second uncrewed test mission to May 2022.
The second test flight was a success, but engineers ran into additional questions about parachute harness connectors and protective tape wrapped around wiring that posed a fire risk in a short circuit. Work to correct those issues and others delayed the first piloted launch to this month.
The Atlas 5 oxygen valve problem was United Launch Alliance’s responsibility. The helium leak responsible for the latest delay goes on the Starliner list, but it apparently is a relatively minor problem and would not have prevented launch last week.
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News.
Boeing’s Starliner was set to make its maiden voyage to the International Space Station, with its first piloted launch Monday night. But the launch, already pushed back following years of delays, was scrubbed with less than two hours to go before liftoff. Mark Strassmanm reports.
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Starliner, like Crew Dragon, is a capsule-shaped spacecraft like the Apollo missions of old. Capable of carrying up to seven astronauts, the craft is largely autonomous, requiring major input only in the event of an emergency. During the test mission beginning tonight, Wilmore and Williams will test out this eventuality, purposefully pointing the spacecraft off course to ensure they can manually get it back on track, as well as assessing the spacecraft’s general life support and navigation systems. While docked to the space station, the vehicle will be put through further tests, including practicing using it as a lifeboat in case astronauts needed to evacuate the ISS.
Starliner is reusable, with Boeing saying it can be flown on up to 10 missions. The spacecraft sports no toilet—unlike Crew Dragon—and has about the same livable volume as an SUV, making for a relatively cozy rise to and from orbit. It has physical hand controls and switches for the astronauts to control the spacecraft, unlike the touch screens used inside Crew Dragon. On its return home, a heat shield keeps the occupants safe from temperatures of some 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, before the vehicle descends under parachute and finally touches down, with the help of airbags to cushion the fall, in one of several desert landing sites in the US.
Boeing is contracted with NASA to launch Starliner six times to the ISS after this test mission, each time carrying four or five astronauts along with cargo for six-month stays aboard the station. The spacecraft will alternate its missions with Crew Dragon, one launching around February and one around August each year. Having that redundancy is hugely beneficial, says Steven Siceloff, public affairs specialist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. “This way, if a technical issue does come up with one vehicle, it does not mean that the space station is on its own for a while,” he says. “It means that there’s alternatives.”
Laura Forczyk, founder of the space consulting firm Astralytical, notes that redundancy is “especially important now because of the unreliability of Russia.” NASA and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, continue to cooperate on the ISS program, including sharing seats between Russia’s Soyuz vehicle, Crew Dragon, and now Starliner, despite the embittered political situation between the two nations.
But beyond these six missions, Boeing has no publicized flights planned for Starliner. “If this was SpaceX, you’d already have Musk talking about three or four contracts that he had in line with famous people,” says McDowell. With the ISS also set to be deorbited in 2030, this could mean Starliner—despite a decade of development and billions of dollars spent—faces the prospect of flying only a handful of times. “We don’t know whether Boeing has the capacity to do additional commercial missions at this time,” says Forczyk.
NASA has been trying to spur the development of new commercial space stations, in the same manner as this commercial crew program, in the hopes they can fill the orbital research void left when the ISS ends. These commercial stations could be destinations for Starliner and Crew Dragon, if they come to fruition, but the exact appetite for this endeavor remains uncertain. “Is there enough of a market to sustain two entities doing this?” says McDowell. “I remain skeptical of commercial space stations. But if they do succeed, you’re going to want multiple options to get up and down.”
Before it grapples with that future, Boeing will simply be hoping for a smooth and successful first crewed flight of Starliner. Once it’s finally in the skies with humans on board, the spacecraft can start to play the role it has long been touted for.
Two veteran astronauts flew to the Kennedy Space Center Thursday afternoon to prepare for the first piloted launch of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, a long-awaited flight running years behind schedule after two uncrewed test flights and extensive work to resolve a variety of technical problems.
Astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams, two of NASA’s most seasoned astronauts with four previous spaceflights, 11 spacewalks and 500 days in orbit between then, landed at the spaceport’s 3-mile-long runway in T-38 jet trainers after a flight from the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Starliner commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore (right) and pilot Sunita Williams (left) flew to the Kennedy Space Center Thursday to prepare for the spacecraft’s first piloted launch to the International Space Station on May 6.
NASA/Frank Michaux
“We love Florida. We love the Kennedy Space Center, because this is where you launch humans into space,” an ebullient Wilmore told reporters on the runway. “In less than two weeks, the next flight we take we’ll be laying on our backs and (launching) into the heavens.”
Completing the Starliner’s Crew Test Flight, or CFT, will “broaden (NASA’s) capability to and from space station, and that’s vitally important,” he said. “We’re excited to be here.”
Said Williams: “This is where the rubber meets the road, where we are going to leave this planet, and that is pretty darn cool!”
A few hours after the crew arrived, and shortly after two Russian cosmonauts completed a four-hour 36-minute spacewalk outside the International Space Station, mission managers completed a two-day flight readiness review, tentatively clearing the Starliner for launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket at 10:34 p.m. EDT on Monday, May 6.
If all goes well, Wilmore and Williams, both former Navy test pilots, will dock at the space station on May 8 and return to Earth May 15 or shortly thereafter. If the mission goes well, NASA plans to begin operational Starliner crew rotation flights in 2025, alternating crew launches with SpaceX.
“Today was a was a huge day for our Commercial Crew Program,” said Steve Stich, manager of the CCP for NASA. “All the (international) partners and then our whole team polled ‘go’ to proceed to the launch on May 6. Not only that, but we (signed) what we call an interim human rating for Starliner for this crewed flight test. … It was a was a huge deal for NASA and our entire team.”
The Starliner spacecraft being lowered into place atop its United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket at launch complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
ULA
NASA awarded two Commercial Crew Program contracts in 2014, one to SpaceX valued at $2.6 billion and the other to Boeing for $4.2 billion, to spur development of independent spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
The goal was to end reliance on Russia’s Soyuz in the wake of the space shuttle’s retirement and to resume launching American astronauts from U.S. soil aboard American rockets and spacecraft. Equally important to NASA is having two independent spacecraft for crew flights to the ISS in case one company’s ferry ship is grounded for any reason.
SpaceX kicked off piloted flights in May 2020, successfully launching two NASA astronauts on a Crew Dragon test flight to the space station. Since then, SpaceX has launched 50 astronauts, cosmonauts and civilians to orbit in eight operational flights to the lab complex, three commercial visits and one privately-funded flight to low-Earth orbit.
Boeing launched its Starliner on an unpiloted test flight in December 2019, but the spacecraft experienced major software and communications problems that combined to derail an attempt to dock with the space station and almost led to the crew ship’s destruction.
A second unpiloted flight was ordered (and paid for by Boeing), but during an August 2021 launch window engineers discovered corroded valves in the spacecraft’s propulsion system. Fixing that problem delayed the second test flight to May 2022.
While the mission was successful, additional problems were discovered, including parachute issues and concern about possibly flammable protective tape wrapped around internal wiring. Correcting those problems, and finding room for a visit in the space station’s complex flight schedule, eventually delayed the Crew Flight Test to May 6.
Given recent problems with Boeing aircraft that have raised questions about the company’s safety culture, a successful Crew Flight Test is seen by many as a critical milestone, both for Boeing and for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
For his part, Wilmore said he didn’t view the Starliner launch in the context of Boeing’s widely reported aircraft issues.
An artist’s impression of a Starliner on final approach to the International Space Station.
NASA
“I don’t think it has necessarily anything to do with Boeing and a flight going off,” he said. “They’re all vitally important. This is human spaceflight. That adage you’ve heard since Apollo 13, failure is not an option? That has nothing specifically to do with Boeing or this program. That’s all the things that we do in human spaceflight.
“So, this one is no more or less important than anything else we’re doing,” he said. “It just happens to be the most important one we’re doing right now.”
Mark Nappi, Boeing’s Starliner program manager, agreed, saying “the success of this mission has always been very important for us as a program for a lot of reasons.”
“Number one, we have humans flying on this vehicle,” he said. “We take that so seriously in human spaceflight. I’ve spent my career in this business, and it always has been the top of the list.
“Second is, this is an important capability for us, for NASA, and so we signed up to go do this, and we’re going to go do it and be successful at it. So I don’t think of it in terms of what’s important for Boeing as much as I think of it as in terms of what’s important for this program, what’s important to follow through with, the commitments that we made to our customer.”
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News.
NASA has confirmed that the object that fell into a Florida home last month was part of a battery pack released from the International Space Station.
This extraordinary incident opens a new frontier in space law. NASA, the homeowner, and attorneys are navigating little-used legal codes and intergovernmental agreements to determine who should pay for the damages.
Alejandro Otero, owner of the Naples, Florida, home struck by the debris, told Ars he is fairly certain the object came from the space station, even before NASA’s confirmation. The circumstances strongly suggested that was the case. The cylindrical piece of metal tore through Otero’s roof on March 8, a few minutes after the time US Space Command reported the reentry of a space station cargo pallet and nine decommissioned batteries over the Gulf of Mexico on a trajectory heading torward the coast of southwest Florida.
On Monday, NASA confirmed the object’s origin after retrieving it from Otero. The agency released a statement saying the object is made of the metal alloy Inconel, weighs 1.6 pounds, and is 4 inches in height and 1.6 inches in diameter.
“As part of the analysis, NASA completed an assessment of the object’s dimensions and features compared to the released hardware and performed a materials analysis,” the agency said. “Based on the examination, the agency determined the debris to be a stanchion from the NASA flight support equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet.”
A Jolt From the sky
Otero was out of the country when his house came under the crosshairs, but his 19-year-old son was home. The impact sounded like fireworks going off, Otero said in an interview Tuesday. A recording from Otero’s Nest camera captured the noise.
The son “was sitting in front of his computer doing homework with his earphones listening to music, and he was jolted out of his chair with a very loud sound,” Otero said.
After surveying the damage when he got home, Otero filed a police report, and first responders helped pull the object out of the subfloor between the first and second stories of his house. It penetrated the roof and ceiling of an unoccupied second-floor bedroom, hit the floor between the bed and a bathroom, and struck a piece of air conditioning ductwork. It hit so hard that it created a bump on the ceiling of the first floor but didn’t penetrate it, according to Otero.
Something the size and mass of this battery support stanchion would have probably struck the house with a terminal velocity of more than 200 mph. At that speed, the results could have been deadly.
“Luckily, nobody got hurt,” Otero said.
A quick glance at the object indicated to Otero that it probably came from space. “It’s super dense, a very strong alloy, a very interesting metal,” he said. “When I saw that it was half-charred and that it had a cylindrical shape that had taken a concave shape from traveling through the atmosphere, I knew it had to be coming from outer space.
“I knew it was manmade,” Otero continued. “I just didn’t know where it was from until I started googling.”
Otero said he found Ars’ original article on the reentry on March 8, along with posts about the event on X. That’s when he contacted a local news outlet. WINK News, the CBS affiliate for southwest Florida, was first to report on the damage to Otero’s home. After Otero tried several times to contact NASA officials, an attorney from Kennedy Space Center called him to hear his story. NASA then dispatched someone to pick up the object from Naples.
The cylindrical object that tore through the home in Naples on March 8 was subsequently taken to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral for analysis.
The space agency said it was a metal support used to mount old batteries on a cargo pallet for disposal. The pallet was jettisoned from the space station in 2021 and the load was expected to eventually fully burn up on entry into Earth’s atmosphere, but one piece survived.
Undated photo provided by NASA shows a recovered chunk of space junk from equipment discarded at the International Space Station. The cylindrical object that tore into a home in Naples, Fla., on March 8, 2024, was subsequently taken to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., for analysis.
NASA via AP
The chunk of metal weighed 1.6 pounds and was 4 inches tall and roughly 1 1/2 inches wide.
Homeowner Alejandro Otero CBS Fort Meyers, Fla. affiliate WINK-TV at the time that he was on vacation when his son told him what had happened. Otero came home early to check on the house, finding the object had ripped through his ceiling and torn up the flooring.
“I was shaking. I was completely in disbelief. What are the chances of something landing on my house with such force to cause so much damage,” Otero said. “I’m super grateful that nobody got hurt.”
The cargo pallet after being tossed by the by the Canadarm2 robotic arm in 2021.Photo: NASA
On Friday, March 8, a pallet of used batteries from the International Space Station (ISS) reentered Earth’s atmosphere over the Gulf of Mexico following an unpredictable journey through orbit.
Taking out the Trash (in Space)
The pallet contained nine batteries and weighed in at 2.9 tons. It had been tossed by the Canadarm2 robotic arm in March 2021 and and has since been tumbling towards Earth in an uncontrolled reentry. The chaotic fall through orbit finally came to an end last week when the cargo pallet reentered on March 8 around 3:29 p.m. ET somewhere above Cancun and Cuba, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who has been tracking the piece of ISS trash.
It’s not clear, however, whether the entire pallet burned up upon reentry through Earth’s atmosphere, or if some parts of it survived the heat. The European Space Agency (ESA) was also monitoring the pallet’s reentry and estimated that some parts may reach the ground but that the likelihood of a person being hit were very low. There have been no reports of injuries or damage since the object returned to Earth.
The pallet is the largest object ever thrown out from the ISS. It was launched to the space station in May 2020 by a Japanese cargo ship to help astronauts replace the old nickel-hydrogen batteries with new, more efficient lithium-ion batteries. These batteries store energy collected by the station’s solar arrays.
It wasn’t meant to end this way for the older batteries, which were supposed to be placed inside a Japanese HTV cargo ship for proper disposal. However, a backlog in the disposal of this type of equipment from the ISS forced NASA to simply toss the batteries inside a cargo pallet using the space station’s robotic arm, which led to their uncontrolled reentry.
The uncontrolled reentry of massive objects such as the battery pallet is fairly uncommon, and most objects that do meet their demise through Earth’s atmosphere usually burn up with no trace left behind. Space agencies commonly accept a 1-in 10,000 probability threshold for the casualty risk of a single uncontrolled reentry, according to ESA. As the space industry continues to grow, it might get trickier to monitor who’s sticking to the rules, which could eventually result in new regulations.
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Less than 24 hours after launching a crew of four on a flight to the International Space Station, SpaceX launched 53 commercial satellites from California on Monday, including an innovative methane emissions monitor built by a nonprofit, then fired off 23 more of its own Starlink satellites from Florida.
The Crew Dragon spacecraft was launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Sunday night from the Kennedy Space Center, kicking off a 28-hour flight to deliver three NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut to the orbiting laboratory.
With the Crew Dragon on course for docking at 3 a.m. EST Tuesday, another Falcon 9 blasted off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base at 5:05 p.m. EST Monday and climbed away to the south toward an orbit around Earth’s poles.
A Falcon 9 blasts off from Vandenberg Space Force Base northwest of Los Angeles carrying 53 “rideshare” payloads bound for polar orbit.
SpaceX
On board were 53 small satellites owned by a variety of vendors booked on SpaceX’s 10th “rideshare” mission, flights intended to give smaller operators an opportunity to launch relatively modest payloads and satellites at relatively low cost. SpaceX charges $300,000 to launch a 110-pound payload and $6,000 for each additional pound.
One of the satellites launched Monday — MethaneSAT — was developed by a subsidiary of the Environmental Defense Fund to measure methane emissions across wide swaths of land and sea using a high-resolution infrared instrument. The idea is to identify previously undetected releases from oil and gas operations and other sources. It is the first such satellite to be built by a nonprofit organization.
“Everybody thought it was crazy,” Steven Hamburg, EDF chief scientist and MethaneSAT project leader, was quoted by The New York Times. “I thought it was crazy, to be honest.”
But the group managed to raise $88 million from a variety of donors, including the government of New Zealand and the Bezos Earth Fund, to get the washing machine-size satellite built.
“MethaneSAT’s superpower is the ability to precisely measure methane levels with high resolution over wide areas, including smaller, diffuse sources that account for most emissions in many regions,” Hamburg said in a statement. “Knowing how much methane is coming from where and how the rates are changing is essential” for climate modeling.
The rideshare satellites were released from the Falcon 9’s second stage as planned over the course of about an hour and 40 minutes, with MethaneSat the last to be released.
Another Falcon 9 blasted off in dense fog from Cape Canaveral, boosting 23 more Starlink internet relay satellites into orbit. A long-range tracking camera captured the surrealistic exhaust plume from the rocket’s nine first stage engines as it climbed out of the lower atmosphere.
Pete Carstens/Spaceflight Now
Before the Transporter 10 deployments were complete, SpaceX launched another Falcon 9 from pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 6:56 p.m., sending 23 more Starlink broadband relay stations into space and boosting the total launched to date to 5,942.
The first stage used for the rideshare mission, making its fifth flight, flew itself back to an on-target landing at Vandenberg after boosting the upper stage and payloads out of the lower atmosphere. The Starlink booster landed on an off-shore droneship. SpaceX has now successfully carried out 281 first stage recoveries, the last 207 in a row.
With the Starlink flight, SpaceX launched three Falcon 9s within 20 hours and two within just one hour and 51 minutes, a new record for the California rocket builder. The company plans to launch more than 140 Falcon-family rockets this year.
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News.
