3 ms·
> An investigation team has found the cause of the incorrect time problem that emerged during the December flight; Starliner gets that information from the Atla
by heisenbit 7y ago
> An investigation team has found the cause of the incorrect time problem that emerged during the December flight; Starliner gets that information from the Atlas 5 rocket that propels it to orbit. Because of the programming error, the spacecraft queried the rocket too early, before the clock had been properly set.
Anyone who has seen a space movie or airplane pilot movie knows these guys go over checklists before doing anything major. Things are checked and double checked independently. But looks like this culture has has been lost. Clock was synced and not checked before launch. Mind boggling.
- onceUponADime 7y agoEh, there is no handshake for something like a clock reading from another system?
- bumby 7y agoIt was actually a layered failure. The "handshake" couldn't happen because the comm was temporarily disrupted due to the location in orbit
- jakeinspace 7y agoBoeing didn't provide any information on their ground displays for this particular clock, meaning that ground didn't have any way of verifying this with a checklist. It's a value that should have been properly telemetered and displayed, but was not. Don't knock JSC mission control, they're extremely professional and don't make silly mistakes like that.
- mzkply 7y agoBut what's crazy is that once the capsule disconnects from the second stage of Atlas, the only remaining part of the whole system... is the Starliner. So what other clock could they be looking at? The Atlas V blows up in the ocean.
- rst 7y agoThis also implies they never ran a simulation on the actual mission timeline (with the 11 hour delay between initial rocket startup and launch), or the error would have occurred during the sim.