CAPE CANAVERAL — Atlas V is a venerable rocket, but it’s about to break new territory: Carrying humans instead of uncrewed missions on board.United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket has been in service for two decades, carrying missions like the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter or the OSIRIS-REx sample return mission to asteroid Bennu since 2002. But as soon as today (May 6) its task is to send two NASA astronauts on board Boeing Starliner.That mission, known as Crew Flight Test (CFT), will send NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station (ISS) at 10:34 p.m. (0234 GMT Tuesday, May 7). And it was not an easy task to make sure Atlas V was ready to carry them from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.”It was between 11,000 and 12,000 verifications that had to be looked at and assessed by our team,” Ian Kappes, deputy manager for the launch vehicle system for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, told Space.com during an interview here at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, nearby the launch pad. “If you asked me, ‘How do you know that you’re ready?’ That’s how I know I’m ready. We worked as one team, to just power through and look at this vehicle.”Related: I flew Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft in 4 different simulators. Here’s what I learned (video, photos)Kappes has been with the commercial crew program since 2014, working his way up from avionics software to his current position. Previous uncrewed launches of Starliner in 2019 and 2022 helped “buy off risk” for CFT’s launch opportunity, he said, but making sure the human rating stuck required examining data that was sometimes 20 or 25 years old.”Some of it was hand calculations; I kid you not,” he said, as the ULA team examined data and re-imagined it for astronauts on board. Questions arose about matters such as the abort system, vehicle accelerations and avionics, among many other matters. two astronauts in spacesuits in a simulator looking at screensNASA astronauts Suni Williams (foreground) and Butch Wilmore wearing Boeing spacesuits in the Starliner spacecraft simulator at NASA’s Johnson Space Center during emergency training on Nov. 3, 2022. (Image credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz)While ULA has flown Atlas V with 10 …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnCAPE CANAVERAL — Atlas V is a venerable rocket, but it’s about to break new territory: Carrying humans instead of uncrewed missions on board.United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket has been in service for two decades, carrying missions like the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter or the OSIRIS-REx sample return mission to asteroid Bennu since 2002. But as soon as today (May 6) its task is to send two NASA astronauts on board Boeing Starliner.That mission, known as Crew Flight Test (CFT), will send NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station (ISS) at 10:34 p.m. (0234 GMT Tuesday, May 7). And it was not an easy task to make sure Atlas V was ready to carry them from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.”It was between 11,000 and 12,000 verifications that had to be looked at and assessed by our team,” Ian Kappes, deputy manager for the launch vehicle system for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, told Space.com during an interview here at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, nearby the launch pad. “If you asked me, ‘How do you know that you’re ready?’ That’s how I know I’m ready. We worked as one team, to just power through and look at this vehicle.”Related: I flew Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft in 4 different simulators. Here’s what I learned (video, photos)Kappes has been with the commercial crew program since 2014, working his way up from avionics software to his current position. Previous uncrewed launches of Starliner in 2019 and 2022 helped “buy off risk” for CFT’s launch opportunity, he said, but making sure the human rating stuck required examining data that was sometimes 20 or 25 years old.”Some of it was hand calculations; I kid you not,” he said, as the ULA team examined data and re-imagined it for astronauts on board. Questions arose about matters such as the abort system, vehicle accelerations and avionics, among many other matters. two astronauts in spacesuits in a simulator looking at screensNASA astronauts Suni Williams (foreground) and Butch Wilmore wearing Boeing spacesuits in the Starliner spacecraft simulator at NASA’s Johnson Space Center during emergency training on Nov. 3, 2022. (Image credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz)While ULA has flown Atlas V with 10 …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
