Space to Ground: Prior to Launch: May 03, 2024

NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station.

What is said in the film

Welcome to Space to Ground, I'm Nilufar Ramji. Today, we’re at NASA’s Mission Simulation and Training Facility at the Johnson Space Center and sitting tall behind me is Boeing's Starliner spacecraft training mockup. We are on the heels of NASA's Boeing Crew Flight Test mission to the International Space Station and this episode will take you behind the scenes for the mission but more on that in a minute.. Let's begin by taking a look at what took place aboard this week, aboard the space station. Researchers from the Canadian Space Agency's VECTION investigation recently published scientific results.

VECTION examines how microgravity affects the ability to visually interpret motion, orientation, and distance as well as how this ability may adapt during and after spaceflight. During preflight and early in flight, astronauts perceive that they have traveled longer distances when lying down than when sitting upright. This perception likely reflects increased use of visual cues both when lying down and in microgravity, since vestibular cues are less reliable in those situations. Impairments in the ability of astronauts to judge their motion and orientation and to estimate distances can have serious operational consequences. Perceiving self-motion typically involves visual, vestibular, and other cues and relying only on visual cues may bias this perception.

Results from the VECTION investigation could improve safety wherever movement under microgravity conditions is required. Over the weekend, NASA SpaceX 30th Cargo Resupply Mission departed the space station, heading for a splash down off the coast of Florida. On Sunday April 28, the Dragon spacecraft undocked from the Harmony module's space-facing port of the International Space Station as part of company’s 30th commercial resupply services mission for the agency. The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft returned to Earth on Tuesday April 30 with completed experiments and various research samples. The undocking of the Cargo Dragon was the first step of a spacecraft ballet.

On Thursday, the four crew members of SpaceX Crew 8 conducted a port relocation to prepare for the arrival of another vehicle. The crew relocated Endeavor, their SpaceX Dragon spacecraft from the forward-facing docking port to the space-facing port of the Harmony module. The relocation opens Harmony’s forward port for the docking of NASA's Boeing Crew Flight Test mission. Now let's get back to why we are here. The upcoming mission to the space station will be the first launch of astronauts on the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, which will be launching to the space station no earlier than Monday, May 6.

The mission will transport NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to and from the space station of the first flight with crew to certify the Starliner and its system for regular crew rotation missions. This flight is also the first crewed launch on the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, and the first time astronauts will have launched on an Atlas family class rocket since Gordon Cooper on the last Mercury program flight aboard 'Faith 7' in May 1963. " We've developed and approved a crew training plan for the CFT mission for Butch and Suni. All the subsequent Starliner crews will also go through the same training plan although we'll be lookikg for lessons learned from CFT to perhaps modify or improve that training plan. The CFT mission is slightly different in that it's a flight test.

We have two flight test pilots on board the mission, Butch and Suni, and will be doing some things to Starliner, with Starliner, that are a little outside the normal automated processes and things that future Starliner crews might see. For instance we'll be doing some operational checkouts of the spacecraft, some manual piloting. We'll also be testing some of the navigation systems to see if Starliner can recover in case it loses track of where it is, So those kinds of objectives have actually added some challenges to the training plan for Butch and Suni that we hope that future Starliner crews won't have to go through. " "So what do you or your team hope to take away from this flight? " "One of the things we're going to focus on primarily is Starliner the spacecraft and how it preforms.

Beyond that, I'm looking for the crew performance, how the crew performance the tasks that we've trained them to do. I'm also looking at the team performance, the flight control teams, how the teams intract with each other and how the mission is successful and safe. Also we plan to take away lots of lessons learned that we can apply to the training plans for future Starliner crews or the execution of those mission. " "And liftoff! Starliner is heading back to space!

" "Having another commercial crew provider will provide NASA flexibility, also it will provide redundancy. I also think it will provide an emphasis on innovation as these providers will want to continue to improve their spacecraft and their experiences for the crew flying them. " After the successful completion of the mission, NASA will begin the final process of certifying Starliner and its systems for regular crewed rotation missions to the space station -- an added capability! NASA Television and NASA+ will have continuous coverage of the upcoming Starliner mission from the launch in Florida to the moments when Suni and Butch are inside the space station after docking. You can also join this mission and follow along on X @commercial_crew or blogs.

nasa. gov/commercialcrew. That's Space to Ground for this week. Thanks for watching.

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