Boeing to conduct fuller end-to-end testing

Announcement follows probe citing multiple problems with Starliner

Boeing plans to change how it does testing for its Starliner astronaut capsule following an investigation that found the company could have caught the issues it faced during a test flight of the spacecraft in December — if it had done more robust testing.

The news comes after an Orlando Sentinel report that members of NASA’s safety advisory panel were “surprised” to learn Boeing had not performed a full, end-to-end test of the entire mission integrated with United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket prior to its troubled flight in December. During the mission, the company experienced numerous problems that, in one instance, could have caused two spacecraft to collide with each other.

In a news conference Friday, Boeing’s vice president and program manager for the Commercial Crew Program — a joint venture with NASA to return astronauts to space from American soil — at first said the Sentinel mischaracterized Boeing’s testing processes, before going on to confirm the Sentinel’s reporting.

Boeing did do extensive testing integrated with the rocket, John Mulholland said, but it didn’t run it through the entire mission — the concern NASA’s safety panel raised.

Instead, it tested the mission in “chunks,” a relatively standard procedure in aerospace testing.

Still, had Boeing run the software through the entire process, a potentially 25-hour-plus ordeal, it would have caught the problems that later cropped up in flight.

On Dec. 20, the capsule, called Starliner, failed to reach the correct orbit because it was running on a timer that was 11 hours ahead. The problem happened because Starliner incorrectly pulled the time from the Atlas V rocket. But during verification, Boeing had chosen to stop testing the two systems together from the point they separate in launch, instead of running a fully integrated test from start to finish.

Had the full test happened in the lab, Mulholland said the issue would have manifested itself, and Boeing could have corrected it before the mission.

“From a hindsight standpoint, I think it’s very easy to see what we should have done because we uncovered an error,” Mulholland said. “This is a tough business. It’s a game of inches. And so you had a highly talented, very dedicated team that made that error. And going forward, we just need to make sure we have the discipline that won’t occur again.”

In the future, Boeing said it will still do extensive testing in chunks, but also add a full end-toend test with the spacecraft and rocket responding to each other to ensure similar unexpected problems don’t occur.

Boeing will also make changes to what it uses to test its software.

The December mission also uncovered another coding error that could have potentially led the spacecraft to collide with its service module, which separates from Starliner before it returns to Earth, while in space.

Luckily, the company caught the problem mid-flight and was able to quickly correct the issue before Starliner returned to Earth on Dec. 22. In fact, much of the mission went well, with certain components even performing better than anticipated.

But the problems have led Boeing to implement new requirements about what exact hardware needs to be used to test certain parts of the mission, Mulholland said.

Boeing has not yet said whether it will repeat a test of its astronaut capsule. NASA is expected to release the full results of an independent investigation into Boeing’s software issues after instructing the company to reverify 1 million lines of code.

BILL INGALLS/NASA Boeing, NASA, and U.S. Army personnel work around the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft shortly after it landed in White Sands, New Mexico, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2019.