NASA has begun an extensive probe of its role in Boeing Co’s CST-100 Starliner program after a review team found that the agency provided insufficient oversight of software and testing work before a botched voyage to the International Space Station.
Boeing software personnel had too much leeway to approve changes without authorization by the broader Starliner team, NASA associate administrator Doug Loverro said on a conference call on Friday.
Boeing and NASA also did not fully understand all potential outcomes for all software code configurations, he said.
Photo: AP
“This was a close call,” Loverro said. “We could have lost a spacecraft — twice — during this mission, at the beginning and the end.”
NASA’s internal assessment signals tougher oversight for Boeing. The December test flight of the company’s Starliner, which is ultimately meant to ferry astronauts to the space station, was cut short by coding problems.
Immediately after the mission, NASA formed an independent review team to pore over data, the spacecraft and how work and testing were performed before launch. That review has already submitted 61 recommendations to Boeing and the agency, many of which focus on software design, testing, validation and integration.
Now, NASA is to conduct an agency-wide assessment to capture lessons learned from mishaps during the flight, which ended on Dec. 22 last year.
“It’s not unusual that you don’t test every logical condition in software, but we clearly recognize that we do need to test every logical condition and cover every logical state that the software could have,” said Loverro, who supervises human spaceflight.
Boeing will incorporate NASA’s recommendations into its plan for moving forward, said Jim Chilton, senior vice president of space and launch for the Chicago-based company.
NASA hired Boeing and Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp to develop new launch vehicles to carry astronauts between Earth and the space station. Russia has provided the sole crew transport since the NASA retired the Space Shuttle in 2011. Delays in the commercial crew program have forced the agency to begin talks to purchase another seat from Russia.
SpaceX ran a successful demonstration flight without crew to the space station a year ago and is preparing for a flight with astronauts this year.
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