Boeing's beleaguered space capsule left the International Space Station at about 5 pm central time, without its astronaut crew. NASA's two test pilots stayed behind at the space station as the Starliner capsule undocked Friday and aimed for a touchdown in New Mexico. Its exit follows months of turmoil over its safety. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams travelled to orbit aboard an Alabama built Atlas-V rocket. APR news director Pat Duggins joined CBS News anchor Lana Zak for national coverage of the first phase of Starliner’s return to Earth—the undocking of the capsule from the International Space Station.
CBS News anchor Lana Zak-- Pat, I am so interested in all this from even before the Starliner launched. It should have returned to Earth aboard Starliner in June after a weeklong mission. There was already so much drama with aborted attempts. Let's just talk about what's going to be happening in moments here. How complex is this undocking?
APR’s Pat Duggins-- Well, Lana, what NASA is trying to avoid is what happened back in 1997. That was when astronaut Michael Foale was aboard the Russian MIR space station, and it was hit by a runaway cargo craft. Foale felt the space station go “wump,” and then all of a sudden, there was a whistling in his ears as the oxygen started racing out of the hole that had been created in one of the science modules. So NASA wants a nice, quiet undocking of the Starliner, it's going to back away, no 1997 MIR “wump” for NASA on this one, hopefully. And, then after that, they're going to be able to find out just how serious the thruster problems were that have been there since docking the spacecraft to the International Space Station.
Lana—It seems like it has been the Starliner has been plagued with so many issues. So we certainly do hope that everything goes smoothly today. Pat, talk to us about what's needed from the space station crew during this undocking procedure. Are How much are they involved? Are they involved at all?
Pat-- Well, they're watching, and they're observing, and they'll be taking myriad pictures when the space shuttle, for example, was lost in 2003 and they resumed a flight to the International Space Station--All kinds of observations, all kinds of photography was done to see what was going on with the spacecraft. How it was behaving in orbit, was there any damage at all? And also, they're going to be watching again, those thrusters, because, you know, assuming two astronauts were aboard this capsule, they would need those thrusters to safely reenter its atmosphere. And, then come hopefully, to a nice quiet halt at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. But so far, everything else has gone wrong with Starliner, and there's even speculation that it might not even remain in control as it goes into the Earth's atmosphere. We're just going to wait and see on that.
Lana-- So let's talk a little bit more about that Pat, because it is incredible that at this point that the Starliner is going to be coming back to Earth without its crew at all. Previously, if you wanted to move a vehicle around in space, you need to have a human basically inside that vehicle. But in this case, it's all going to be remotely operated here on Earth. Talk to us a little bit about the logistics of what goes into that.
Pat-- Well, autopilot is available on Starliner. It was not, it was not fully operational on the space shuttle. As you recall, it would land like an airplane. So, NASA was able to handle everything except that last thirty feet before the wheels touched the ground. You had to have somebody inside the spacecraft with their hand on the control stick to make sure everything went okay. But what's going to happen with Starliner is it's going to be kind of harkening back to Apollo and Gemini, where the the Gumdrop shaped vehicle that you see now on your screen is going to re-enter the atmosphere with the blunt end of the spacecraft with a heat shield, shielding the inside of the spacecraft from that 3000 degrees of heat as the vehicle rubs against the atmosphere, going toward the earth. And, then once it gets through the heat of reentry, then you're going to have parachutes are going to pop out. But the difference is, if any of your parents or grandparents remember Apollo, those vehicles splashed in the ocean. What's going to happen is this vehicle is going to float down toward New Mexico and then at the very last minute, deploy inflatable airbags that are going to just gently cushion that last few feet as the vehicle bumps onto the ground. They were tested that before to make sure that if humans were in there, the bump would be serious enough to injure them. They think that's okay, but right now, with all the problems with the thrusters, they want to make sure that it goes through the atmosphere, that the parachutes work fine.
