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From Liftoff to Landing, NASA Ames Works to Support Commercial Crew

The Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft is lifted at the Vertical Integration Facility at Space Launch Complex-41 at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on May 4, 2022.
The Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft is lifted at the Vertical Integration Facility at Space Launch Complex-41 at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on May 4, 2022. Starliner will be secured atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket for Boeing’s second Orbital Flight Test (OFT-2) to the International Space Station for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The spacecraft rolled out from Boeing’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center earlier in the day.
NASA / Frank Michaux

Engineers and scientists at NASA know about getting humans to space and home again safely.

Long before the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft’s uncrewed Orbital Flight Test-2, or OFT-2, lifts off toward the International Space Station, engineers at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley subjected specialized test models of the spacecraft to super-fast air in some of the world’s most unique wind tunnel facilities to better understand how it will perform.

Ames has gained decades of experience testing and evaluating spacecraft during launch, a potential launch abort, flight, and re-entry including most recently the development of NASA’s Orion crew vehicle and Space Launch System, or SLS, rocket. Orion and SLS are part of NASA’s Artemis program that will take astronauts to Gateway and send the first woman and person of color to the Moon.

Companies like Boeing work closely with experts at NASA to gather critical performance data on their spacecraft designs before flight. 

A new service module was mated to a Boeing CST-100 Starliner crew module to form a complete spacecraft on March 12, 2022, in Boeing’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
A view of the heat shield as a new service module was mated to a Boeing CST-100 Starliner crew module to form a complete spacecraft on March 12, 2022, in Boeing’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Boeing

To help test Starliner’s brand new heat shield technology, called the Boeing Lightweight Ablator, Ames’ engineers used the Arc Jet Complex to simulate the heat the Starliner spacecraft must endure as it re-enters our atmosphere. Whether commercial partners like Boeing develop their own heat shield materials or use NASA’s designs, testing their performance at temperatures up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit helps ensure a spacecraft can return safely to Earth.  

Engineers also simulated re-entry conditions using NASA’s fastest supercomputer to supplement and strengthen the wind tunnel and arc jet tests. 

OFT-2 is scheduled to launch at 6:54 p.m. EDT on Thursday, May 19, from Space Launch Complex-41 on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The uncrewed flight test will serve as an end-to-end demonstration to prove Boeing’s Starliner is ready for crewed flights to and from the space station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.

Author: Rachel Hoover, NASA’s Ames Research Center