The last major element of a test version of Boeings CST-100 Starliner arrived at the company’s spacecraft factory at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to launch assembly. The upper dome of the craft the company is calling Spacecraft 1 rolled through the doors of the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility at Kennedy on May 20 so engineers and technicians could launch outfitting it with systems before joining the upper dome to the docking hatch and lower dome elements that arrived earlier in May. The spacecraft’s arrival points toward a time when the company routinely produces and launches Starliners on operational missions taking astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Machined into a honeycomb sample to reduce weight while maintaining strength,the upper and lower domes will form the crew compartment of the Starliner once assembled together. Thermal shielding will encase the domes on the external and a base heat shield will be connected to the bottom to total the spacecraft ahead of its pad abort flight test. That flight test will not carry people, but will include an attached service module holding propellant and supply tanks along with four powerful launch abort engines. The test will be an automated demonstration of the launch escape system’s ability of to lift the Starliner out of danger in the unlikely event of an emergency on the launch pad or during the climb into orbit. The work is taking location as the Starliner’s structural test article – a total Starliner spacecraft designed only for tests on Earth – finishes its assembly and is readied for shipping to California for analysis in conditions similar to those found in space. Read much more about the spacecraft’s arrival and its importance to NASA’s goals for the Commercial Crew Program and enhanced research on the space station: http://depart.nasa.gov/1UtFLU4. Photo credit: NASA/Dimitri Gerondidakis
Source: nasa.gov