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Boeing's Starliner Lands Successfully; No Crew On Board; Sentencing In Hush Money Trial Delayed Until After Election; Trump Attends Hearing To Overturn Verdict In Defamation Case. Aired 1-2a ET
Aired September 07, 2024 - 01:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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LYNDA KINKADE, CNN INTERNATIONAL HOST: Hello, and welcome to all our viewers watching here in the U.S. and around the world. I'm Lynda Kinkade.
Ahead on CNN Newsroom --
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Touchdown.
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KINKADE: Picture perfect. Boeing's Starliner successfully returns to Earth, but without its crew. Also, we're hearing from the student who stopped the alleged Georgie gunman from entering her classroom, as he and his father make their first court appearance. And we're tracking Typhoon Yagi, as it is set to make landfall in Vietnam.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Live from Atlanta, this is CNN Newsroom with Lynda Kinkade.
KINKADE: Well, after a troubled flight to the International Space Station, Boeing's Starliner has arrived safely back on Earth.
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UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Touchdown. The Starliner is back on Earth. That landing coming at 11 --
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KINKADE: Well, Starliner landed at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico, as people in NASA's mission control in Houston, Texas, clapped and cheered. Starliner launched back in June and docked with the International Space Station. It was supposed to return to Earth a week later, but helium leaks and thruster problems prompted NASA to delay that return.
The astronauts who were supposed to return on Starliner remain on the space station. Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will return to Earth on SpaceX in February.
Well, former NASA Administrator and former Astronaut and retired Marine General, Charles Bolden, joins us now from Arlington, Virginia. Good to have you with us.
MAJOR GEN. CHARLES F. BOLDEN JR. (RET.), FORMER NASA ADMINISTRATOR, & FORMER NASA ASTRONAUT: Good to be with you, Lynda. How are you doing?
KINKADE: I'm well. I'm well. So, it was good watching the Starliner land just last hour. It was six hours after leaving the ISS without its astronaut crew. How would you describe that landing?
BOLDEN JR.: I thought it was picture perfect. As your previous guest, both Terry Virts and Miles O'Brien commented, it was the kind of landing that I think most of us expected, and the only thing that we would have liked to have seen different would have to -- we had had a crew on board, but that was not to be.
KINKADE: Yeah. So, talk to us about that decision. Was it the right decision to leave the crew on the International Space Station?
BOLDEN JR.: Lynda, I have been away from NASA since 2017, and I'm no longer privy to the meetings and the decision-making that goes on. So, I wouldn't dare second guess the team. I'll add one thing that Miles O'Brien talked about a little bit earlier, but we have the benefit of remembering vividly, as we commemorate at the end of every January the loss of two spacecraft, three spacecraft, actually, with the account of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia, where we failed to communicate as we should.
And I think this time, there was not exact agreement between Boeing and NASA on the shape of the vehicle or the condition of the vehicle. And so, in that case, the right thing to do is follow -- just take the safest course of action, which is what I think they did.
KINKADE: And of course, the main issues with this spacecraft was, of course, the thrusters, five of the 28 malfunctioned when it was trying to dock with the International Space Station back in June, but also the helium leak. This was, of course, a test flight of a brand new spacecraft. If you were giving it a score out of 10, what would you give it?
BOLDEN JR.: Well, I'm not sure. I -- when you don't complete the mission, it's kind of -- you definitely don't get a 10. I -- they didn't complete the test. So, let's say -- I'll let it be an ungraded test.
KINKADE: Fair enough. Yeah. They left the astronauts, of course --
BOLDEN JR.: Yeah. Yeah.
KINKADE: -- Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. They were meant to return on that spacecraft after eight days. Now they could be in space for eight months. Talk to us more about that call. And these are veteran astronauts. Are there any risks from that long-term space exposure? BOLDEN JR.: The risks are numerous. Everything we do in space flight
is risky, but I think that the risks that we incur by leaving them there are, both of them are veterans of space station missions.
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So, they have had long-term exposure to radiation. This will add another eight or nine months. So, we have a limit as to how much people can be exposed. So, the doctors will be looking when they come back from this mission to make sure that they're not anywhere close to their limits, if they want to fly again.
The other thing is, they do not have the SpaceX space suits to come home. So -- but, NASA is taking -- NASA, along with SpaceX, is taking measures to get suits to the station. We've got six months to do that. So, they will have appropriate suits to come home. And they took the measure of taking two members off the crew nine flight that should be launching here toward the end of this month, so that they'll have seats for Butch and Suni to come back as a part of the crew, nine crew, when they return.
KINKADE: And when you look at the Starliner, which spent six hours coming back to Earth from the International Space Station today, what was the riskiest part of that journey back to Earth?
BOLDEN JR.: That's -- reentry the deorbit burn is always a risky part, because if you don't get it right, you're not on the proper trajectory for going -- for reentering the atmosphere, and there is always a chance the vehicle will burn up or skip out. So, that's the number one risk. And I think when the people in Houston and at Boeing were thinking about the decision to whether or not to bring the crew in, that was not a small risk. If the thrusters did not work correctly, and you got a faulty deorbit burn, then we probably would not have been able to safety -- safely get the crew back.
I think most people felt very confident. I know Boeing felt confident that everything would work. They felt that they understood the problem. What we -- what I think they don't understand, of what I don't understand is the physics of a particular part of the thrusters, and that's -- I think it's a Teflon liner that didn't behave exactly the way that they thought they would. So, the thrusters behaved or performed, I think, perfectly based on the success of the reentry.
KINKADE: And of course, this particular mission, it was way behind schedule, more than a billion dollars over budget. But, speak to us about the importance of NASA having these commercial relationships with the likes of Boeing and SpaceX.
BOLDEN JR.: Well, the guy who was there when the decision was made that we were going to do this, it is critically important that we have alternative providers, that you have back-ups. One of the big reasons is you want to be able to control the cost, and when you have multiple providers, you have alternatives, then you have competition and the cost stays down. You never want to find yourself with a sole provider.
So, we need to get Boeing flying. We have another company called Sierra Space that I think some -- in the next few months should fly out their vehicle for cargo delivery, and it has a crew capability, but I think they're years away with that. So, we need an alternative provider.
This was the point that we had most of our battles with Congress in getting funding for the Commercial Crew Program, when we went to them in 2010-2011, and they failed to fund the Commercial Crew Program and failed to do so for almost five years. And that's what really put the program behind. It was the failure to get full funding for the program so that we could get started in earnest.
KINKADE: Right. Interesting insight. Former NASA Astronaut and NASA Administrator, Charles Bolden, good to have you on the program. Thanks so much.
BOLDEN JR.: Good to be with you. Thank you.
KINKADE: Well, after the break, father and son appear in court, as they face charges in the deadly Georgia school shooting. We're going to have more on that when we come back. Plus, Donald Trump can delay any concerns about being sentenced before the presidential election. Coming up after the break, the latest decision in his hush money case.
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KINKADE: Welcome back. U.S Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is praising the judge's decision in his hush money trial to delay sentencing until after November 26, well after the election. Trump took time off from campaigning Friday to appear in another Manhattan courtroom. He listened to arguments in his appeal against the verdict that E. Jean Carroll won against him for sexual abuse and defamation.
CNN's Katelyn Polantz has more on both cases.
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KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: A judge in the state of New York says he is not going to sentence Donald Trump 41 days before the presidential election. Instead, Donald Trump will be sentenced on November 26, a couple weeks later, for the 34 criminal counts that a jury has found him guilty of for sending hush money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels because of an alleged affair he was trying to keep quiet during the last time or two times ago that Trump ran for President.
This situation is one that has never been handled in any court before, and Judge Juan Merchan in New York acknowledged this in a four-page letter on Friday moving the sentencing date. He wrote that this is a matter that stands alone and one of the most critical and difficult decisions a trial court judge faces that the proceeding should be so protected. The justice here should have so much integrity, the jury verdict
should be protected, and the independence of the judiciary should be acknowledged to the point where this sentencing cannot take place before the election. Judge Merchan does not want to advantage or disadvantage any political party or candidate, and thus is moving the sentencing date of Donald Trump.
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So, there is the possibility now that Trump either could be a criminal defendant with no special powers whatsoever at his disposal come November if he loses the election, or he could be the President-elect of the United States, a man with pardon power over federal protections -- federal convictions, but not somebody who would have any pardon power in a state case like this, this hush money criminal conviction. So, a lot is going to be happening over the next couple of weeks there.
We also are very aware that his team is going to continue to fight, not just the fact that he is going to be sentenced here in this case in November, but all of the cases. And to that point, on Friday, his team was in court on Friday, in an appeals court.
Trump attended a hearing that last about a half an hour before three judges, where they're trying to overturn a $5 million defamation verdict that a jury awarded to the columnist E. Jean Carroll for sexual abuse and defamation. No decision was made on Friday, but we will await that decision from the appeals court and whether the trial is conducted appropriately in the coming weeks or months.
Katelyn Polantz, CNN, Washington.
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KINKADE: Well, the wait for the White House is in a critical stage right now, with just 60 days until the election. Both the Trump and Harris campaigns are focusing on key battleground states, even as they get ready for their first debate on Tuesday. Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign has been focused on the southeastern states of Georgia and North Carolina, while the Trump team has been tackling the Democrats' so-called blue wall of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Several states will start early with in-person voting in about two weeks' time.
Well, Liz Cheney announced Wednesday that she'll be voting for Kamala Harris come November. She is revealing how her father, former Republican U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, will be voting, and his choice may surprise you. Here is the former Wyoming Congresswoman speaking in Austin, Texas.
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LIZ CHENEY, FORMER U.S. HOUSE REPUBLICAN: Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris. My dad believes, and he said publicly that there has never been an individual in our country who is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump is. (END VIDEO CLIP)
KINKADE: Well, Trump is now attacking Cheney for supporting Kamala Harris, a decision Cheney confirmed in a statement. Talking to Truth Social, Trump dismissed the ex-VP as a quote, "irrelevant Republican in name only."
Well, charged with four counts of felony murder, suspected Georgia high school shooter Colt Gray is now facing life in prison, if convicted in Wednesday's shooting. The 14-year-old and his father appeared separately in court on Friday to face charges for that shooting that left four people dead.
CNN's Ryan Young reports.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good morning, sir. Are you Mr. Colt Gray?
RYAN YOUNG, U.S. CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In a green t-shirt, handcuffed with unkempt hair, the teenager accused of Wednesday's deadly school shooting in Georgia made his court appearance.
JUDGE CURRIE MINGLEDORFF II, JACKSON COUNTY, GEORGIA: The penalty for the crimes for which you are charged does not include death. It includes life without the possibility of parole or life with the possibility of parole.
YOUNG (voice-over): The 14-year-old is charged with four counts of felony murder and will be tried as an adult, but he is not eligible for the death penalty in Georgia because he is under 18. Colt Gray did not enter a plea in court.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At this time, you honor, there is not a request for bond.
YOUNG (voice-over): The teen is accused of opening fire with an AR-15- style rifle at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I thought I was going to die.
YOUNG (voice-over): -- killing math teachers Cristina Irimie and Richard Aspinwall, along with 14-year-old students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo.
Back in court today, devastated families of the victims embraced and cried. The suspect's father, Colin Gray, also made his first court appearance. Colin Gray was arraigned on multiple counts of involuntary manslaughter, second-degree murder and child cruelty. An arrest warrant says the 54-year-old allegedly gave his son a gun quote "with knowledge that he was a threat to himself and others."
BRAD SMITH, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, PIEDMONT JUDICIAL CIRCUIT: You don't have to have been physically injured in this to be a victim. Everyone in this community is a victim. Every child in that school was a victim. YOUNG (voice-over): The FBI says, in May of 2023, law enforcement
interviewed the father and son after receiving several anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting. That interview was recorded by the Jackson County Sheriff's Office.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you have any weapons in the house?
COLIN GRAY, FATHER OF COLT GRAY, ACCUSED IN APALACHEE HIGH SCHOOL SHOOTING: I do.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are they accessible to him?
GRAY: They are. I mean, there is nothing -- nothing loaded, but they are down. We actually -- we do a lot of shooting. We do a lot of deer hunting.
YOUNG (voice-over): Colt's father even told police he been trying to teach his son about gun safety.
GRAY: Yeah. I want you to talk to him and just tell him, like, I don't know -- I don't know anything about him (BEEP) like that, and I'm going to be mad as hell if he did and then all the guns will go away.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.
GRAY: And they won't be accessible to him. You know, we -- I'm trying to be honest with you. I'm trying to teach him about firearms and safety and how to do it all and get him interested in the outdoors.
YOUNG (voice-over): In December of 2023, two law enforcement sources say Colin Gray purchased the gun allegedly used in this shooting as a holiday gift for his son. Colin Gray did not enter a plea, and faces a maximum penalty of 180 years in prison. The charges against him are the most serious filed against the parent of an alleged school shooter, and this is only the second time a parent has been charged in connection with a minor carrying out a mass shooting.
JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: To be purchasing a weapon in December of 2023 under conditions where potentially your son should not have one, is troubling. But, I do think we are in a world where prosecutors are looking to use all the tools available to them.
YOUNG (voice-over): The mother and father of Ethan Crumbley, the Oxford, Michigan, school shooter who killed four students in 2021, were both convicted of involuntary manslaughter earlier this year. Of the charges filed against Colin Gray in Georgia, the Barrow County District Attorney says --
SMITH: I'm not trying to send a message. I'm just trying to use the tools of arsenal to prosecute people for the crimes they commit.
YOUNG: So many small kids have shown up today to the vigil outside the high school. They want to pay their respects. We've also talked to kids who've lost their friends, people they consider buddies, and that's hard for them. They don't know how they're going to return back to school, how a memorial is going to be set up. These are all questions that people in this community want to answer. We do know the DA man played and put more charges out there, something that we'll continue to watch.
Reporting in Winder, Ryan Young, CNN.
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KINKADE: 14-year-old Bri Jones says she encountered the suspect moments before he opened fire. She told CNN's Isabel Rosales that she saw him pull out a gun after he knocked in her classroom door. So, she never let him in.
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BRI JONES, BLOCKED GUNMAN FROM HER CLASSROOM: I feel like if I would have opened the door, then, like, he would have got every single one of us in that class, and I don't want me, my teacher, my friends in the class, and my other classmates, I don't want none of us to get hurt. So, I just didn't go. Like, I thank God that I did not open that doors.
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KINKADE: Well. Jones was asked how she is processing the mass shooting, knowing that she was likely the first person to see the gunman. This is what she said.
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JONES: It does keep me playing in my head, because, like, I did see a big gun, and like, this is the same gun that hurt a lot of people, but like, it just keeps me playing my head. And I just -- I really thank God, I, my teacher, and my classmates did not get hurt. Like, I really do thank God for that.
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KINKADE: Well, the students won't resume classes until Tuesday, when the rest of the school system returns.
Well, Typhoon Yagi is making landfall right now in northern Vietnam. The storm has re-intensified and is once again the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane. One of the year's strongest storms, Yagi is expected to bring significant wind damage and widespread rain from northern Vietnam to neighboring Laos through Sunday.
The typhoon weakened slightly after making landfall on China's Hainan Island on Friday, but it still managed to pack a punch, clocking maximum sustained winds of 230 kilometers per hour. That's about 140 miles per hour. That makes Yagi the strongest typhoon to make landfall on that popular holiday island in a decade.
I want to go now to journalist Manisha Tank, who joins us live from Singapore. Good to have you with us, Manisha. So, this is the most powerful typhoon to hit China's Hainan Island, but it also made landfall just moments ago in Vietnam. What can you tell us?
MANISHA TANK, JOURNALIST: Well, I can tell you that obviously Vietnam has been preparing for this. We've been hearing the news over the last few days about this typhoon that started as a lower grade storm, but then very quickly intensified and became a super typhoon. You've already gone over some of the numbers in terms of wind speed when it hit, what is otherwise known as China's Hawaii, Hainan.
But, now it gets to Vietnam, as you say. So, people in the bay there, which is somewhat close to Hanoi, we're talking about 75 miles east of Hanoi, they've been tying their boats down. They have been witnessing these very dark stormy clouds. It's rather ominous if you look out from the coastline, and you tend to see really strong storm surges in circumstances like this.
So, like you say, it's going to make landfall. Now, what that could mean is that we could see a downgrading as it does make that landfall. But, all of that is yet to be seen. In terms of impact, there is often wind damage. This is what we've already seen as it tears its way across that region. Buildings have been damaged, certainly in China. There were power outages. We really hope the same won't happen in Vietnam, but that is very much what they are preparing for. Obviously, lots of people asking if this is normal to see storms of this magnitude.
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Certainly, what scientists are saying, with hotter oceans is we're seeing storms like this intensify more quickly than we have in the past. So, very much a wary outlook. But, we are not unfamiliar with these sorts of storms at this time of the year. On the opposite side of the world, of course, near the U.S., it would be hurricane season, but in this part of the world, very much the typhoon season. And obviously, we will keep on tracking this over the coming hours and update you as to what we see.
KINKADE: All right. Good to have you with us. Manisha Tank for us live from Singapore, thank you.
Well, NASA and Boeing are about to discuss the troubled Starliner's return to Earth. We're going to bring that to you live when it happens. Stay with us. You're watching CNN.
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KINKADE: Hello, and welcome to our viewers watching here in the U.S. and around the world. I'm Lynda Kinkade.
Well, Boeing's Starliner has successfully landed back on Earth after a troubled mission to the International Space Station.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Touchdown. The Starliner is back on Earth. That landing --
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KINKADE: Starliner is Boeing's effort to provide commercial space service for NASA. Now, the project has been plagued with problems for years. The Starliner mission launched back in June, it docked with the International Space Station, and was supposed to return to Earth a week later, but helium leaks and thruster problems prompted NASA to delay the return. The astronauts who were supposed to return on Starliner remain on the space station. Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will return to Earth on a SpaceX flight in February.
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Garrett Reisman is joining us now live. He is a former NASA Astronaut and a Professor of Astronautical Engineering at the University of Southern California. Good to have you with us.
GARRETT REISMAN, FORMER NASA ASTRONAUT, & PROF., ASTRONAUTICAL ENGINEERING, USC: My pleasure to be here, Lynda.
KINKADE: So, we are awaiting a news conference from NASA, which is meant to happen at any moment. We will bring you that live when it happens. But, I just want to ask you, firstly, about the Starliner reentry, landing back on Earth. How would you describe that touchdown?
REISMAN: Well, it went very well, and I think that's really what we expected to see. I think all of us who have been following along, that have some involvement with this, thought that it would most definitely be successful. And if we had to wager, we would have put good money on getting exactly what we got tonight, a pretty successful entry. However, we weren't ready to bet somebody's life on it. And I think NASA did make the correct decision, even though it's clear now that Butch and Suni would have been OK. I think it was the smart thing to do to have them stay up there and take the ride home in six more months.
KINKADE: Talk to us about that risk that you're weighing up. You said that you expected this to land as it did, but didn't want to take the risk of potentially bringing two astronauts home on that spacecraft. Why not?
REISMAN: Well, yeah. And this is a measure of vindication for the Boeing managers and engineers that were adamant that the risk was acceptable. But, the problem is that we never fully understood the risk. So, we had these problems with the thrusters. We thought --
KINKADE: Hi Garrett. Sorry to interrupt. I just want to go to the NASA press conference. I'll come back to you in a moment.
JOEL MONTALBANO, DEPUTY ASSOC. ADMINISTRATOR, NASA SPACE OPERATIONS MISSION DIRECTORATE: -- room and for those online, as was said, NASA and Boeing safely returned the Starliner spacecraft just after 11:00 p.m. Central Time to the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico after spending approximately three months attached to the International Space Station. It's great to have the Starliner home. A safe and successful landing was exactly what we wanted. It was uncrewed and everybody see the systems work is exactly what we wanted. It's important to remember this was a test mission, right? We
(TECHNICAL DIFFICULTY) this mission. The team spent a lot of time understanding the board, doing additional testing, now out of White Sands, doing analysis here, and I mean, the team, the NASA team, the Boeing team, across the partnership, we worked together to get this data and pull things.
We did learn a lot. This was (TECHNICAL DIFFICULTY) crew. The Starliner and the Atlas V (TECHNICAL DIFFICULTY) and the procedures and the processes for that on (TECHNICAL DIFFICULTY) some manual piloting. We had a successful docking, and we had three vehicle on board the International Space Station as we learned to operate with the systems and the crew and the interfaces there.
I want to go ahead and thank the Boeing team, the Commercial Crew Program, International Space Station Program, our international partners, and all the engineers that worked on this mission to get us where we are today. With that, I'll hand it over to Steve. Thank you.
STEVE STICH, MANAGER, NASA COMMERCIAL CREW PROGRAM: Yeah. Thanks, Joel, and thanks for your interest in the Commercial Crew Program, and thanks for being here at a relatively late hour.
It was a great day today to return Starliner. It was great to have a successful undock, the orbit and landing of the vehicle. We're really excited to have Calypso back on the ground. Suni told the ground team, you've got this, it brings Calypso back, and that's what they did tonight. I am thrilled for our Boeing team and all of our colleagues have worked this mission across the country. On the NASA team and the Boeing team, they've put a lot of heart and soul into this mission over many years, and it's a testament to those people that we got the vehicle back safely today.
I can tell you that CFT is very personal to our team and to a lot of the people that worked on the mission, and it represents a tremendous honor to bring the vehicle back to achieve a lot of test objectives today when we brought the vehicle back, and then really paved the way for future Starliner missions.
I'm happy to report Starliner did really well today in the undock, the orbit and landing sequence. We used the NASA docking system for the second time on the mission to undock from the space station. That system performed really well. It's a derivative system, what we use for Orion down the road. So, it was good to pave the way for Orion as well.
The spacecraft executed a nominal breakout sequence, the first time we've used that, to back away from the station. We backed out to about five meters, and then did a series of about 12 burns using the service module four jets, and then we opened -- after that sequence of maneuvers, we ended up opening at about 22 kilometers per rev away from the space station.
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All those thrusters did really well through that sep sequence, no problems at all, no fail offs or any problems at all. We had a good chance to look at the helium system today. When we -- before we undocked, we repressurized that system. We had a criteria of eight psi per hour in the (inaudible) system for that, the helium, and we were about four, four and a half psi per hour.
So, the helium system performed really well. And then, when we backed away from the system or from the state space station, we did hot fire a number of thrusters on the service module. All eight of those forward thrusters worked just great. We were able to look at the thrust of those thrusters, and it was nominal. All were performed at 100 percent and we also hot fired two aft thrusters, and those worked well.
We had great performance from the GNC system, the Guidance, Navigation, and Control, the VESTA system. Last fight (ph) on OFT2, we had a little bit of trouble with what we call a calibration maneuver to really make sure that the attitude is good for this space integrated GPS/INS system, and that went really well. We had a deorbit burn that executed on time, at 11:17 p.m. Central. It was about 130 meters per second, 58-second burn. It was a really good burn, and the service module thrusters performed well for that burn. The Omax performed well.
We watched the burn. We saw a couple of things in the starboard doghouse. We talked a little bit about the temperatures there being a little higher. One of the thrusters, STS-82 (ph) didn't fail off, but it had a little higher temperature than expected. So, we'll look at that data a little bit after the flight, and then another thruster in the top doghouse had a little higher temperature.
We intentionally had planned to inhibit the software to let thrusters fail off during the deorbit burn, and that worked fine. So, we really need to go back and look at all that data. The service module separated away, just fine. That sequence went well. Once we separate the service module, we don't have good insight into those thrusters on the service module, but we expected it to be in the Pacific Ocean, right where we intended it to be.
During entry, the vehicle performed great. We flew just fine. The GNC system performed well, perfect entry. The one thing that we will have to go look at after the flight is when we hot fired before, we had the entry. We hot fired on the crew module. There is 12 thrusters, and one of the up firing thrusters did not perform at all. We hot fired it twice, and we used two different methods to talk to it, two different parts of the avionics system, and we never saw any chamber pressure or any pulses there.
It looked like it's a -- this is different than the service module thrusters. It's what we call a mono-propellant system. It's very simple. It has a valve that opens and then the propellant flows across the cat bed. And as it flows across that cat bed, there is a reaction and causes thrust. And for some reason, that thruster did not perform, but we used the redundant thruster on the other manifold. There is another up firing thruster that worked just fine during entry, but something we'll have to go work out. The -- it was a bullseye landing. Great landing out at White Sands.
The one thing we worked a little bit during entry is for some reason, and when we came out of the plasma, the navigation system, we call it the SIGI 3, kind of failed off temporarily, and then that system was brought back on, and it was tracking just fine. SIGI 2 also had a couple little hiccups during entry.
We'll have to go look at that, and that's really the only things that happened during entry. The sublimator that we had a little trouble with, that's a cooling device that uses -- used to cool the vehicle during entry. It performed really well. We had a little trouble forming what we call an ice block on that during ascent, and that performed great tonight.
It's really great to get the spacecraft back, and then we'll start the next step. So, we've been talking to the Boeing team already about next steps. We want to get in to the spacecraft and start working on the helium system. We talked about -- we know we have a seal that we've got to go replace on the flanges on the RCS thrusters. We need to upgrade that material to make it hypergolic compatible, and then maybe a little bigger size. We'll do that.
Boeing has already formed teams to look at the changes that need to be made for Starliner 1 in terms of the thermal environment and doghouses. Can we do something different to make the doghouses a little less thermally severe for the OMAC burns and the thrusters? A second team is looking at the hot fire of the thrusters that's needed on the service module to complete the qualification and make sure we understand which pulses cause the Teflon seed on the oxide to swell. And then, thirdly, there is a GNC team already formed to look and figure out how we go fly the vehicle differently.
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Can we change the dead bands? Can we change the way it flies to not stress the thrusters? And so, that work has already started, and that's really the path to Starliner 1. So, I'm super proud of the team. It was a great day for the Commercial Crew Program and also for Boeing. Congratulations to that team who worked so hard. It's great to have the spacecraft back, and we're now focused on Starliner 1. And I'll turn it over to Dana.
DANA WEIGEL, MANAGER, INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION, NASA JOHNSON: Thank you very much, Steve, and thank you all for being here with us at this very late hour, and for your interest in the undocking of the Starliner from the International Space Station and its successful landing.
I want to congratulate the Boeing team. They did a fantastic job with the operations this evening. They had to make a number of changes to the plan in short order. There were a lot of differences between the crew and the uncrewed mission, including, as Steve talked about, the differences in the departure sequence. Fantastic job executing that.
After Starliner undocked from the harmony or node two forward port, it backed away and then executed a series of breakout burns. It went up over and behind ISS. The crew was watching it until it was out of view, but then they came back and they watched the reentry and the deorbit. In fact, they got some really neat views of the Starliner streaking through the atmosphere using some of the station video cameras on board. Pretty neat to see.
The rest of the month in front of us onboard station is really busy. I know I've talked to you about this before. But, just as a reminder, next week, we've got the Soyuz crew exchange with the launch of the 73 Soyuz on September 11, bringing up NASA astronaut Don Pettit, and then we're returning NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson on the 72 Soyuz when that comes home. At the end of the month, we'll bring up crew nine, do a handover between crew eight and crew nine, and then bring the crew eight vehicle home.
I do want to express my sincerest appreciation for the team. They worked tirelessly over the whole summer. We had the Starliner onboard station for months. Most folks were working nights, weekends. They did an excellent job. The proof is in getting the vehicle safely home today. I know we've got a lot of things that we learned on the mission. We've got work in front of us, but I know that we've got the right teams in place to tackle these challenges and help us fly our future Starliner missions.
And with that, I will hand it back over to Brandy.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All right. Thank you. OK. So, we're going to start with questions here in the room. Then we'll take them from the phone bridge. A reminder, if you're joining us by phone, let us know you have a question by pressing star one, and if your question gets answered and you want to withdraw it, you can press star two to get out of the queue.
But, let's start here in the room. How about Eric?
ERIC BERGER, SENIOR SPACE EDITOR, ARS TECHNICA: Hi. Eric Berger with Ars Technica. Thanks for the great show tonight. I was really a stunning reentry. I wanted to ask about the arc of the Commercial Crew Program. I was going to ask both Boeing and NASA, but they -- I guess they didn't show up for some reason. But, anyway, it's been a decade since the CT -- CCtCap awards were given out. Had to go look up that acronym. I'd forgotten it. But, it was a big experiment in fixed price contracts and human spaceflight. And so, I'm just wondering, a decade later, literally, it has been a decade, after all this happened with Dragon, with Boeing, with the delays and now with this mission, just to get a sense of you from NASA, if -- is the experiment of success and kind of what is the future of human spaceflight with this commercial approach?
MONTALBANO: I'll start. From a commercial standpoint, we have two crew vehicles, the Dragon, Starliner, and obviously, some work that we need to do on Starliner. We have commercial vehicles with cargo vehicles and the Dragon and the Northrop Grumman Cygnus. We have the Dream Chaser that's coming up next year. And so, is it slower than what we expected? Absolutely right. It is slower, but it's -- we're making progress. And to me, we are learning. Every time we have a mission, we learn something. That gets passed on. We're sharing things across the commercial world.
You saw last year, I'll say Blue Origin had that parachute anomaly and the teams all got together and shared across the different companies what they learned. And to me, that's what this program is helping out. It's sharing the expertise of flying in space. And I'll let Steve and Dana add.
STICH: Yeah. I think that's an interesting retrospective way to look at things, Eric, the fact that here we are 10 years into the program, and how are we doing.
[01:45:00]
I would say we've done a great job at fielding two transportation systems, and in fairly record time, if you look at our development programs these days within NASA, commercial crew has done an amazing feat of getting to two crewed vehicles in 10 years, and really in the last four years, having bringing along online Dragon, Crew Dragon, and then also now Starliner.
The unique thing that we're doing as well as sort of fostering this market in low Earth orbit, we already see space -- SpaceX flying non- NASA flights. They have one that they're trying to get off the ground, Polaris Dawn. They flew inspiration for. They've flown a number of PAM missions. They've got another PAM am mission coming up in the middle of next year. So, you're starting to see that market get fostered in non-NASA missions, which was what we want. And then, if you really think about our vehicles and what we really want to do, Space Station is a great vehicle. It's awesome place, but at some point, the Space Station is going to need to be retired. And so, we're preparing vehicles right now to be there in the future for these commercial LEO destinations as well.
So, I think it's been an interesting, as you said, and when we started, it was kind of an experiment on the heels of cargo. But now, we're starting to see the benefits of the investments by both NASA and our partners. And that's the one thing that's different about our program, is there is investment from both now the NASA side, and also, in my case, SpaceX and Boeing to make the vehicle safe and successful.
UNIDENTIFIED FEAMLE: All right. Mark.
MARK CARREAU, JOURNALIST, AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY: Oh, thank you. Mark Carreau with the Aviation Week & Space Technology. How long would you sort of estimate that it will take the Commercial Crew Program Space Station partnering, or whatever, to sort of assess this flight and what steps need to follow just kind of to make a full report that you're all satisfied with that layout steps ahead.
STICH: Yeah. I think the timeline is a little bit -- we're going to take our time to figure out what we need to do to go fly Starliner 1, right? We've laid out right now, manifest-wise, we have that flight booked next year in the second slot of the year. The first thing we'll do when we get the vehicle back is to continue to look at all the data, look at the thruster performance for this phase of flight in detail. And then we already have these teams that I've talked about established. They're going to start meeting weekly on looking at the design changes required and the helium system to eliminate the leaks.
And then, can we fly the vehicle different? Can we change the thermal in the doghouses? What testing do we need at White Sands? It'll take a little time to lay that out and then get into the testing. And then, I think we'll see where we're at in another month or so, and then we'll have a little bit better idea of what the overall schedule will be.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. Gina, go ahead.
GINA SUNSERI, JOURNALIST, ABC NEWS: Gina Sunseri, ABC News. I'm not sure who wants us. But, we heard a lot about the problems. But, what about Starliner's performance particularly impressed you or surprised you in a positive fashion?
STICH: Yeah. I would say not a surprise. But, if I just look at the three flights we've flown, OFT1, OFT2, and CFT, the Starliner performance and executing the entry phase has been just about flawless, other than the problem we see with the SIGI, when it comes out of the plasma a little bit, it has a little trouble acquiring in one of the receivers, it seems.
But, if I look at the way the vehicle flies, the thruster performance, hitting the target at the landing site, the parachute deploys separating the forward heat shield and getting the drogue parachutes out, stabilizing the vehicle, then putting the main parachutes out, and then separating the heat shield, which is a complicated separation, and deploying the airbags.
The third time now we've landed a capsule in the U.S. on land. The entry in particular has been darn near flawless. So, that -- I wouldn't say it surprised me, but as I step back and think about the mission, the entry itself was just -- and the orbit burn was spot on.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. Why don't we go to the phone bridge next? We will start with Marcia Dunn with the Associated Press.
MARCIA DUNN, JOURNALIST, ASSOCIATED PRESS (VIA TELEPHONE): Yes. Hi. Probably for you, Steve. It sounds like you won't require another test flight, that an operational Starliner 1 with the crew will be next. Is that how it looks as of today? Am I understanding that correctly that the next flight will be fully certified, ready to go with the crew, to be a real crew swap? Thanks.
STICH: Yeah. I would say it's probably too early to think about exactly what the next flight looks like. I think we want to take the steps to go look at all the data. Certainly, our goal is to get to the rotation flight.
[01:50:00]
Our goal all along has been to have one flight a year, one flight from Boeing Starliner and another flight from SpaceX with Dragon. So, it'll take a little time to determine the path forward. But, today, we saw the vehicle perform really well. We've got some things we know we've got to go work on, and we'll go do that and fix those things, and then go fly when we're ready. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, Marcia. How about Bill Harwood with
CBS News?
BILL HARWOOD, SENIOR SPACE CONSULTANT, CBS NEWS (VIA TELEPHONE): Yeah. Thanks. Actually, Marcia just asked my question. So, let me ask you a different one, for Steve Stich. If a crew had been on board the spacecraft tonight, would anything have been different, or would it just have been the same reentry we saw basically? I mean, I know you had a quick fly out to get away from station without the crew on board. But, just from a crew standpoint, if they had been on board, just for the record, everything would have been fine. Is that correct?
STICH: Yeah. If we'd have had a crew on board the spacecraft, we would have flown the same back away sequence from the space station and the same deorbit burn and executed the same entry. And so, it would have been a safe, successful landing with the crew on board, had we have had Butch and Suni on board.
HARWOOD (VIA TELEPHONE): You don't have second thoughts about these things. But, would you have any second thoughts about the decision not to bring them back if you had it to do over again, knowing what you know now about the landing?
STICH: Yeah. I think it's always hard to have that retrospective look. We made the decision to have an uncrewed flight based on what we knew at the time, and based on our knowledge of the thrusters, and based on the modeling that we had and we -- if we'd have had a model that would have predicted what we saw tonight perfectly, yeah, it looks like an easy decision to go say we could have had a crewed flight, but we didn't have that. We didn't have a way to take that White Sands testing and anchored in a model. And so, I think we made the right decision --
KINKADE: You're watching CNN. You've just been listening to the news conference from NASA after the successful landing of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft. They described it as a safe and successful landing, which is exactly what they wanted, calling it a bullseye landing.
We also heard some details about what worked, what didn't work. I want to bring back Garrett Reisman, who is a former NASA Astronaut and a professor of Astronautical Engineering at the University of Southern California. Thanks for sticking around for us. So, part of the problem with this spacecraft when it tried to dock with the International Space Station back in June was, of course, the helium leak and the thrusters that malfunctioned. We got an update with the information they've got so far and how they performed on that mission home. What stood out to you?
REISMAN: Well, yeah, that was very interesting. So, you heard Steve Stich chalk up all the victories, and a lot of things went right on the ride home. But, there were some interesting things in there too that he got to kind of at the end there, which is that two of the thrusters of the 28 thrusters on the service module, two of them experienced high temperatures, higher than they would have liked to have seen. So, something still going on there. And -- but they still continued to function.
But, they also have a separate thruster system on the capsule itself, and there are 12 of those thrusters of a completely different design, but one of them failed, and they have enough backups that it didn't affect the landing. But, I think there is just -- obviously, there is a series of problems here that NASA needs to look at carefully before they decide to put people on this vehicle yet again.
We all hope that that day come soon, that we get people flying on Starliner. We all want that to happen. And I think if this would have gone differently tonight, that day would have been much further off if it wasn't successful. But, that doesn't mean that there is not more work to be done.
KINKADE: Exactly. I mean, they also said they poured their heart and soul into this mission over many years. Of course, this was way overdue, way over budget, about a billion dollars over budget. In the realms of space expenses, how does that compare to what you've seen in the past?
REISMAN: It's actually pretty good. That sounds horrible, but only a billion. So, yeah.
KINKADE: You meant to underestimate and over-deliver?
REISMAN: Yeah. So -- but there is something very significantly different about this, which is very painful for Boeing, and that is, this is a commercial contract, and it's firm fixed price. Typically, when you have cost overruns, the government pays for it. The taxpayer pays for whatever.
If it goes $1 billion, $10 billion over budget, Congress just has to pay the bill per the contract. But, this is firm fixed price, which means that the cost of these overruns is borne by the commercial provider, in this case, Boeing, and they've taken kind of a bath. Their bottom line does not look good on this program, but it's incumbent upon them. They bear the risk of cost and schedule, not the U.S. taxpayer.
[01:55:00]
So, it's a very different situation than is usually the case.
KINKADE: Yeah. Interesting point. And of course, you've worked with SpaceX, and I understand you're still an advisor. What can you tell us about a spacecraft they'll send to bring those astronauts back, Suni and Butch come February?
REISMAN: Well, their Dragon is about ready to launch. There are going to be two less people on board. It's only a couple of weeks away. Near the end of the month, they'll launch this Crew Nine Dragon, and it'll have Nick Hague and a Russian cosmonaut on board in two empty seats, and those -- the seats -- and the people that would have filled those seats, Suni and Butch, who are still up on the Space Station, the two Starliner astronauts will take their place, and there'll be repercussions and downstream effects. But, I still think it was the right call, because it wasn't wholly
without incident, this return home tonight. They couldn't predict really what was going to happen. So, even though, yeah, Suni and Butch would have been fine if they came home tonight, I think NASA did the right thing in playing it safe.
KINKADE: And just finally, how crucial are these partnerships between companies like SpaceX and Boeing with NASA when it comes to the future of space?
REISMAN: Well, it's really important. And NASA decided that they really wanted to have two providers, not just one. And ironically, way back in 2014 when they awarded this contract, if they went with one, it probably would have been Boeing. And -- but this whole incident illustrates exactly why it's important to have two options, because if there wasn't a SpaceX Dragon ready to fly, they would have no choice but to have Butch and Suni ride home in this -- in the Starliner tonight. And it would have been a real nail biter. I'm good friends with Suni and I would have been really stressed out tonight. I was glad to see Starliner come home with her safe on the space station.
KINKADE: Garrett Reisman, great to have you with us. Thanks for your time. Appreciate it.
REISMAN: My pleasure, anytime.
KINKADE: And thanks to you for joining us. I'm Lynda Kinkade. Stick around. Another hour of CNN Newsroom is just ahead with my colleague Anna Coren.
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