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This is not entirely correct, after all, Starliner was attempting to dock autonomously before the thruster issues hit near the station. The software is configur
by dotnet00 2y ago
This is not entirely correct, after all, Starliner was attempting to dock autonomously before the thruster issues hit near the station. The software is configured for autonomous undock, but not autonomous fault handling (since if a crew is available, they're better for fault handling). The software update is to enable the autonomous fault handling that is needed when a crew is not available.
"Essentially, what we're asking the team is to go back two years in time and resurrect the software parameters that are required to give automatic responses to breakouts near the ISS should we have a problem in close to ISS, which the software now allows them to do manually," Stich said. "The team is always updating these mission data loads as different things change."
- https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/nasa-official-acknowledges-internal-disagreement-on-safety-of-starliner-return/ https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/nasa-official-acknowle...
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoThat doesn't sound good! So the current "autonomous" capability isn't fully autonomous, and is less capable (at least in this near-ISS maneuvering regard) than what they had 2 years ago?!
- dotnet00 2y agoI mean, it makes sense that if you have a crew onboard, you want to make the crew handle the cases when the software thinks something is wrong. Similar to how plane autopilots will disengage for many kinds of faults. If you don't have crew onboard, you don't have any choice but to rely on the software's judgement. I think the big problem is that the changeover is going to take several weeks, since Starliner should be able to fallback to flying autonomously if the crew happens to become incapacitated for some reason. The changeover should've just been a matter of sending a command from the ground or via a relay satellite.