5333 private links
The company's main rocket has been supporting missions since 2010, and it's now set another impressive record. //
On Thursday, SpaceX announced via Twitter that the Falcon 9 is now the most-flown operational rocket in the United States, having undertaken 85 flights. //
It marks a key milestone for the Falcon 9, which on Thursday also marked the 10th anniversary of its first flight. //
The Falcon 9 set the stage for SpaceX to move further. It measures 230 feet tall, 12 feet in diameter, and weighs 1.2 million pounds. It's capable of transporting over 50,000 pounds to low Earth orbit. As the name suggests, the rocket uses nine Merlin engines versus the single Merlin engine used with the Falcon 1. That gives it more than 1.7 million pounds of thrust at sea level. //
But perhaps Falcon 9's most important improvement was its reusability. That enables SpaceX to recuperate around $46.5 million of the estimated $62 million price tag associated with these flights. SpaceX first attempted to land a Falcon 9 booster in 2013, but only succeeded for the first time the following year. By 2017 it was landing 15 cores per year. It has landed the Falcon 9 booster 46 times, and reflown it 31 times.
It is understood that one of the test objectives of the May 29 static fire was to test disconnecting the umbilicals ahead of a planned 150-meter test flight scheduled for the following week. The umbilicals must be able to quickly detach when the launch vehicle leaves the pad.
During the testing of the quick disconnects, the system malfunctioned – spilling large amounts of propellant. This could be seen during NASASpaceflight’s live stream of the test.
The propellant eventually ignited, leading to a large explosion. It is not entirely clear what the ignition source was, but a still frame from the NASASpaceflight broadcast shows that the ignition occurred near the base of the vehicle.
Notably, the structural integrity of Starship is not believed to be the cause of the accident. SpaceX has had issues with the prototypes collapsing under high pressure in the past. All of the previous full-scale prototypes failed cryogenic pressurization testing.
Including the May 29 test, SpaceX completed five static fires with Starship SN4. No previous Starship had even gotten far enough to have an engine installed. The Raptor engines performed well throughout testing, and the vehicle’s primary structure held strong.
“I've done crazier things than dry out a radio antenna.” //
Demo-2, the first orbital human spaceflight to launch from the United States since NASA's space shuttle fleet retired in 2011, is a joint SpaceX-NASA effort. The company holds a $2.6 billion contract with NASA's Commercial Crew Program to fly six operational crewed missions to the ISS, and Demo-2 is designed to fully validate Crew Dragon and the Falcon 9 for those flights. //
Approximately two-thirds of the global launch market is effectively closed to competition because these are national payloads. For example, Russia and other space-faring countries will typically launch their military and science satellites on domestic rockets. Only about one-third of the overall launch market—consisting of satellite constellations, communications and imaging satellites for nations without launch programs, and other payloads—is truly open to competition.
Decades ago, US launch companies ceded this commercial market as they began to focus on winning more lucrative contracts to launch payloads for the US military. By 2006, when Boeing and Lockheed Martin consolidated their rocket businesses into a single company, United Launch Alliance, America essentially captured zero percent of the competitive launch market. Customers in the United States and abroad turned to more economical launchers in Europe, Russia, and elsewhere to reach orbit. Meanwhile, with a monopoly on launching missions for NASA and the US Department of Defense, United Launch Alliance’s prices steadily rose.
The success of the Falcon 9 rocket reversed this trend dramatically. Seeking lower cost delivery of supplies to the International Space Station, NASA invested $396 million in SpaceX from 2006 to 2010 to develop its Cargo Dragon spacecraft, the Falcon 9 rocket, and a launch pad at the Cape. This investment, which precipitated the June 4, 2010 launch from Florida, delivered not just value for NASA, but for the country. //
“Because of the investments that NASA has made into SpaceX we now have, the United States of America now has about 70 percent of the commercial launch market,” said the space agency’s administrator, Jim Bridenstine. “That is a big change from 2012 when we had exactly zero percent.” //
Most visibly, the company demonstrated reuse of the first stage booster. On its very next mission following the CRS-7 failure, in fact, SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 first stage for the first time. The next April, the company nailed its first drone ship landing. Then, in March 2017, the company successfully re-flew a Falcon 9 first stage for the first time. In the three years since, SpaceX has landed more than 50 rockets and flown the same booster five or more times.
Carissa Christensen, founder of Bryce Space and Technology, an analytics firm, said the reuse of vertically launched and landed rockets had been discussed in the aerospace community for decades. "This was always something that would make a difference, and it was desirable, but it never happened," she said. "Then SpaceX made it happen."
Moreover, she said, the company did this on its own initiative. Typically in spaceflight, a government agency will offer a contract for some type of project and pick a contractor to do the work. Although SpaceX received a substantial amount of NASA funding for cargo and crew delivery to the space station, it got no money for reuse. Instead, Christensen said, the company invested its own funds to clear a "very, very high" technical hurdle that others had aspired to. In return for chancing its own funds on reuse, SpaceX now has the world's only reusable, orbital rocket, and it has just furthered its ability to dominate the commercial satellite market. //
"It's clear that the space industry is on a path toward next-generation launch vehicles," she said. "But SpaceX is 10 years ahead of those next-generation launch vehicles. SpaceX had its first launch of its next-generation launch vehicle 10 years ago." The world of launch, she marveled, has tilted almost beyond recognition from a decade ago. Then, SpaceX was the upstart. Now the Falcon 9 is considered the old, reliable launch vehicle. //
Falcon 9 lifts SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft to the ISS. It currently carries cargo, but could one day bring humans to space as well.
Going forward, U.S. space exploration will be mostly done by the private sector, that is, if we wish to retain our lead @teamcavuto //
Cavuto had to throw cold water on the excitement. With no less than 5 of his guests, he insisted on asking, “What do you think about private companies taking the lead in space flight?” His tone and tenor implied that this was a bad thing—something wrong. //
Well, Mr. Cavuto, private enterprise has been at the forefront of aviation since its beginnings here in these United States. When the Wright Brothers took their famous flight, they were not employees of the Federal Government. Robert Goddard, long looked at as one of the pioneers of American rocketry, was a private citizen, funded mostly by private organizations. Throughout the rise of first aviation and then rocketry, private citizens, either alone or in private companies, were leading the charge on new discoveries and technological innovation.
One major exception to this, was when NACA/NASA was given the mission to beat the Soviets into space and thence to the Moon. Indeed, many of the researchers and designers were federal employees. But that was a crash program and itself an aberration. //
One tool that enabled this private sector innovation was the use of prize money or private sponsorships. In aviation, prize money, either from private donations or even sometimes from government, was quite commonly used to incentivize the private sector to solve a technological problem. Here is a clip from the December 1947 issue of Flying Magazine. Note the public-private partnership and use of prize money. //
Our education system is sadly failing our citizens. The fact that one of the lead anchors on an allegedly center-right news organization looks at a privately-led exploration effort in space and considers that not only some sort of aberration, but implies that there is something wrong with it, bothers me. It’s an insult to explorers and innovators like Drake, Cook, Shackleton, Goddard, Frank, and Orville Wright, to name but a few. Mr. Cavuto, it’s NASA that is the aberration, not Space-X.
Crew Dragon has arrived at launchpad 39A ahead of next week's launch.
At nearly 20 tons, the Long March 5B is the largest space vehicle to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere uncontrolled since Soviet Salyut in 1991. //
The Chinese communist regime is a box of surprises — bad ones. We have not yet recovered from the coronavirus pandemic they caused, and they have already exposed us to another huge risk. At 11:33 a.m. on May 11, a gigantic, out-of-control space object crossed the atmosphere and fell into the Atlantic Ocean, showering debris over several villages on the Ivory Coast.
It even crashed into a family’s house, not causing casualties but spreading panic throughout the area. Just 15 minutes earlier, it had flown over New York, threatening the country’s most populated city with a space massacre.
It was not a mistake, nor a mission failure. Quite simply, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to completely disregard human lives. In fact, it considers the mission to have been “a great success.”
What plummeted to Earth was the wreckage of the Long March 5B rocket, launched May 5 from the Wenchang Space Launch Center. According to the calculations of Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who has followed this event in detail, it weighed about 20 tons and is the largest space vehicle to fall out of control to Earth since the Soviet space station Salyut, which crashed in Argentina in 1991.
The crash of Long March 5B was closely followed by the U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron, which monitors space debris from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The official Chinese story rambles on about the mission’s success and the extraordinary separation between the rocket and its cargo 488 seconds after takeoff, but does not say a word about what happened next. //
Despite its enormous size, however, the rocket did not have a second stage to control of the central part of the vehicle after launch. In other words, China had planned only for the launch. It hadn’t provided any information about the craft’s re-entry to Earth, nor did it have a plan to bring it down safely.
If the Long March were a small rocket, it would have disintegrated when it passed through the atmosphere, but a 176-foot-tall rocket with 10 engines does not completely disintegrate on re-entry. For the sake of comparison, the impending fall of the Chinese space station Tiangong-1 rocked the world in 2018, and it weighed only eight tons. Long March 5B weighs more than double that. Even if atmospheric shock broke it into a million pieces, it would still pose a serious danger if it fell into populated areas.
Following the first reports received from the Ivory Coast last Tuesday night about engine parts falling over several villages in the country, it has been confirmed they are remnants of the Chinese rocket. Local media say it is a miracle that the shower of pipes and engine parts has not caused any casualties, as far as we know. //
China repeatedly fails to comply with rocket-launch regulations, as it sends the crafts off from populated areas. Last year, during the launch of Long March 3B, its first stage fell in the vicinity, destroying several houses and contaminating the area with highly toxic fuel residues. Although the Chinese government veils any technological failures in absolute secrecy, Western sources consider that hundreds of people could have died.
As usual, the CCP’s propaganda machine littered social networks with two surprising statements impossible to prove: that the people were evacuated before the crash and that the owners of the destroyed houses were happy because the regime would give them new houses.
Based on the preliminary radio elset, OTV 6 appears to have been inserted into a 45-degree inclined orbit at ~390 km altitude. The ground track repeats every 3 days:
Jonathan McDowell
@planet4589
·
May 12
Reports of a 12-m-long object crashing into the village of Mahounou in Cote d'Ivoire. It's directly on the CZ-5B reentry track, 2100 km downrange from the Space-Track reentry location. Possible that part of the stage could have sliced through the atmo that far (photo: Aminata24)
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule will be only the fifth American craft to be rated for human spaceflight in history. Clearing NASA’s certification process takes years.
Earlier this month, SpaceX engineers completed the 27th and final test of the parachute system that will soon be responsible for carrying astronauts back to Earth. When the four parachute canopies successfully unfurled over the Mojave Desert, it indicated that the company was finally ready to start sending humans to space after nearly a decade of relentless testing and dramatic setbacks. Now SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule is on the cusp of becoming only the fifth American spacecraft to ever be certified by NASA for human spaceflight. But before that happens, the company has to pass a final high-stakes test: sending a pair of astronauts into orbit and bringing them safely back home.
On May 27, SpaceX is expected to launch NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The astronauts will be doing critical scientific work on the space station, but the upcoming Demo-2 mission is first and foremost about certifying Crew Dragon for human spaceflight. “Most of our human certification is being completed with this mission,” SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said during a press conference earlier this month. “We’re doing this to wring out the system. This is a test mission.” She estimated that the Demo-2 mission would account for about 95 percent of the human-rating certification process for the Crew Dragon capsule. //
The last time NASA certified a new spacecraft for humans was in 1981, during the maiden flight of the space shuttle. The shuttle program came to an end in 2011, which was the last time American astronauts launched to space from US soil. For the past decade, all astronauts bound for the space station have hitched a ride on Russian rockets. NASA awarded SpaceX and Boeing contracts to certify their own crewed vehicles only a year after the last shuttle flight, but building a human-rated spacecraft has proven to be a long journey. //
all human-rated spacecraft must be capable of being manually and remotely controlled, even if the spacecraft is usually almost entirely automated. //
Both companies successfully completed pad abort tests, which involve firing the escape thrusters on a crew capsule while it’s still on the launch pad. But only SpaceX conducted an in-flight abort test and jettisoned its capsule from a rocket during flight. Boeing opted to do simulations of an in-flight abort test based on its data.
As SpaceX continues its steady march of Starlink internet satellite launches, the company reaches... //
The seventh flight of Starlink satellites is set to launch Wednesday, 22 April at 15:30 EDT (19:30 UTC) from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center.
The U.S.’s most flown, active rocket:
This flight marks a major point in U.S. launch operations, as Falcon 9 reaches 84 flights to its name and officially takes the mantle from Atlas V as the most flown, currently operational U.S. rocket.
Atlas V began flying on 21 August 2002 and has 83 flights to its name after 18 years — for an annual rate of 4.6 launches.
Falcon 9 began flying on 4 June 2010 and will reach 84 flights in just under 10 years with a flight rate of 8.4 launches per year. //
The changing of the guard — so to speak — is made all the more impressive by the fact that in its first three years, Falcon 9 only flew five times.
By June 2015, the rocket had 19 flights to its name — 14 flights in two years compared to 5 flights in the first three years.
In the second five years of operation, Falcon 9 amassed an impressive 65 flights (counting the seventh flight of Starlink on Wednesday) — an average of 13 missions a year. //
Moreover, the impressive rise of Falcon 9 occurred while SpaceX actively redesigned — in some cases, radically — the rocket through numerous changes, culminating more or less in the Block 5 design flying today.
Meanwhile, the company implemented reusability with the Falcon 9 to a scale that sent U.S. and global competitors scrambling to design lower-cost and/or reusable rocket systems. //
With the seventh flight of Starlink on Wednesday, SpaceX will make its 92nd orbital launch attempt.
At this rate, the company will likely achieve its 100th orbital launch attempt in the summer or autumn months this year.
The new document does not include pricing information for Starship, alas.
Weather was fine for a Sunday morning launch attempt, rocket was not. //
9:30am ET Sunday update: The flight computers stopped the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket on Sunday morning at T-0. There was apparently a power issue with at least one of the rocket's nine engines that caused an automatic shutdown after ignition occurred. The company will not make a second attempt on Sunday.
SpaceX has a backup opportunity for Monday morning, likely around 9am ET (13:00 UTC), but it is not clear whether they will utilize it. This will be determined after engineers analyze the cause of Sunday morning's abort and determine the best path forward toward a safe launch. Weather is similarly favorable for Monday.
Weather looks fine for the Sunday morning launch attempt. //
JustAnotherSchmoeSmack-Fu Master, in trainingreplyabout 22 hours agoReader Fav
corscan wrote:
On a slight tangent, has there been any more to explain why the booster failed to land last month? SpaceX is usually pretty open, so maybe I've just missed something. Googling just brings up the initial reporting for me.
Here you go, from the man himself: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/12361174359057858561
Quote:
Recent missed landing (at sea) was due to incorrect wind data. If this (land) landing fails, it will most likely be for a different reason.
They then corrected that on the next launch:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/12361166002452561922
Quote:
Rocket will land in highest winds ever at Cape Canaveral tonight. This is intentional envelope expansion.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1236156567449305089?lang=en
Quote:
Envelope expanded
“We could have lost a spacecraft twice during this mission.” //
By declaring the Starliner mishap a "close call," Loverro also formally opened a process during which the space agency's Safety Office will investigate the organization elements that may have led to the incident—likely focusing on why NASA did not detect the errors in Starliner's flight software.
Loverro said no decisions are close to being made on when Starliner will return to flight or whether Boeing will have to fly another uncrewed demonstration test flight before NASA astronauts fly on Starliner. The next step, he said, is for Boeing to prepare a "corrective action plan" to implement the review team's findings, and that will include a schedule. NASA will evaluate that plan and then it may be in a position to decide whether another test flight is needed. //
As part of its initial review NASA has also studied whether Boeing's problems with Starliner will affect other areas of human spaceflight. So far, Loverro said, there appear to be no spillover effects on the other company working with NASA as part of the commercial crew program, SpaceX. NASA appears satisfied with that company's end-to-end software testing procedures. SpaceX is continuing preparations for a crew flight of its Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, likely sometime in May.
A similar challenge two decades ago boosted a nascent SpaceX.
She mapped Apollo 11’s path to history. Now, her legacy lives on in the trajectories of future spaceflights—including the moon landing planned for 2024. //
SOPHIA CHEN02.28.20 8:00 AM
SCIENCE
Katherine Johnson’s Math Will Steer NASA Back to the Moon
She mapped Apollo 11’s path to history. Now, her legacy lives on in the trajectories of future spaceflights—including the moon landing planned for 2024.
Katherine Johnson looking at paper with data being printed
PHOTOGRAPH: NASA
Katherine Johnson blazed trails, not just as a black female mathematician during the Cold War, but by mapping literal paths through outer space. Her math continues to carve out new paths for spacecraft navigating our solar system, as NASA engineers use evolved versions of her equations that will execute missions to the moon and beyond.
The retired NASA mathematician, who died Monday at the age of 101, calculated the trajectories of the agency’s first space missions, including John Glenn’s 1962 spaceflight in which he became the first American to orbit the planet, and the first moon landing in 1969. But Johnson’s contributions to spaceflight extend beyond such historic moments, several of which are dramatized in the 2016 movie Hidden Figures. Her work forms part of the mathematical foundation of NASA’s missions today. “She had a big contribution to trajectory design in general,” says NASA aerospace engineer Jenny Gruber. //
These missions are not unlike trying to hit a rotating bull’s-eye with a dart while jumping off a carousel, the dart being the astronaut, the Earth the spinning carousel, and the bull’s eye a spot on the moon. As Johnson told a PBS interviewer in 2011, “It was intricate, but it was possible.” //
So just as Johnson's team did in the 1960s, Gruber and her team are trying to calculate and plan for all possible scenarios on the way to the moon. “If you get it wrong, people die,” she says. “And then people see it on TV.” //
SOPHIA CHEN02.28.20 8:00 AM
SCIENCE
Katherine Johnson’s Math Will Steer NASA Back to the Moon
She mapped Apollo 11’s path to history. Now, her legacy lives on in the trajectories of future spaceflights—including the moon landing planned for 2024.
Katherine Johnson looking at paper with data being printed
PHOTOGRAPH: NASA
Katherine Johnson blazed trails, not just as a black female mathematician during the Cold War, but by mapping literal paths through outer space. Her math continues to carve out new paths for spacecraft navigating our solar system, as NASA engineers use evolved versions of her equations that will execute missions to the moon and beyond.
The retired NASA mathematician, who died Monday at the age of 101, calculated the trajectories of the agency’s first space missions, including John Glenn’s 1962 spaceflight in which he became the first American to orbit the planet, and the first moon landing in 1969. But Johnson’s contributions to spaceflight extend beyond such historic moments, several of which are dramatized in the 2016 movie Hidden Figures. Her work forms part of the mathematical foundation of NASA’s missions today. “She had a big contribution to trajectory design in general,” says NASA aerospace engineer Jenny Gruber.
At NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Gruber works on the Artemis mission, which plans to send the first woman and the next man to the moon in 2024. Gruber plans trajectories for Artemis, just as Johnson did for the first lunar landing. Gruber’s basic task remains essentially the same as Johnson’s was in 1962: to calculate the speed, acceleration, and direction required to lob a spacecraft of certain size and fuel capacity to hit a moving target, without a lot of room for extra maneuvering.
These missions are not unlike trying to hit a rotating bull’s-eye with a dart while jumping off a carousel, the dart being the astronaut, the Earth the spinning carousel, and the bull’s eye a spot on the moon. As Johnson told a PBS interviewer in 2011, “It was intricate, but it was possible.”
Once launched, astronauts have limited means for adjusting their trajectory, and small errors committed either by trajectory planners or the astronauts themselves can result in dire consequences. For example, Scott Carpenter, who replicated Glenn’s flight and was the sixth human in space, overshot his target landing spot in the Atlantic Ocean by 250 miles because he fell behind preparing for re-entry. (A US Navy team safely recovered him about three hours later.) So just as Johnson's team did in the 1960s, Gruber and her team are trying to calculate and plan for all possible scenarios on the way to the moon. “If you get it wrong, people die,” she says. “And then people see it on TV.”
The job has always had crazy high pressure. One of the most important aspects of Johnson’s mathematical prowess is that her calculations involved real people, real objects interacting at the limits of human engineering. During these missions, human lives were at stake, and so was the outcome of the space race between the US and the former Soviet Union. “The space program was in overdrive, trying to get ahead of the Russians,” says NASA historian Bill Barry. And, of course, the whole world was watching the Apollo 11 moon landing on television.
Although the basics of space missions have remained the same, much has evolved in mission planning since Johnson’s time. In ’60s, NASA employed so-called “human computers”—mostly women like Johnson—to perform the calculations. “The main reason women were hired to be computers was that it was drudge work,” says Barry. “The engineers didn’t want to do it.”
But even if the public didn’t know much about these mathematicians, the astronauts relied on them. While preparing for the 1962 Friendship 7 mission, Glenn famously did not trust NASA’s “new” electronic computer, the multimillion-dollar IBM 7090, to plan his trip. He specifically requested that Johnson, who worked at NASA’s Flight Research Division, double-check the IBM’s computations with pen and paper. “‘Get the girl,’” Glenn said, according to Barry. “Everyone knew which ‘girl’ he meant. Katherine Johnson was the premier mathematician doing this type of work.” //
Today, it’s a cliché that “space is hard.” But in Johnson’s time, it wasn’t just hard—up until then, it had seemed impossible; Johnson helped make it possible. Barry credits her work, in part, for enabling current ventures such as commercial rocket companies like SpaceX. “So much of what she did is buried in the mathematical DNA of how to do spaceflight,” says Barry. Thanks to Johnson's pioneering math, spaceflight is now routine. “It’s well-known rocket science now.”
No word on pricing or when the company plans to fly.
SpaceX successfully launched a unique Falcon 9 rocket at LC-39A for the in-flight abort test…
written by Thomas Burghardt
December 21, 2019
After a maiden flight that was shortened by an off-nominal orbit insertion, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner conducted its first landing from orbit. Touchdown at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico occurred at 5:58 AM MST (12:58 UTC) on December 22.
The spacecraft approached from the southwest, overflying the Pacific Ocean and Baja California.
If, at any point leading up to the deorbit burn, NASA or Boeing teams felt the need to reevaluate landing options, there was a backup landing opportunity at 1:48 PM MST (20:48 UTC). Had this backup attempt is utilized, the spacecraft would have approached from the northwest. However, the first opportunity was taken.
Sunday’s landing attempt came six days earlier than originally intended. The Orbital Flight Test (OFT) mission to demonstrate end-to-end performance of the uncrewed spacecraft was cut short by an error with Starliner’s Mission Elapsed Timer (MET).
During launch, Starliner sets its MET based on data retrieved from its Atlas V launch vehicle. During Friday’s nominal launch, Starliner retrieved the wrong data, resulting in an incorrectly set MET.
After nominally separating from the rocket, Starliner’s MET indicated that the spacecraft was at a point in the mission profile different than its actual location. This disagreement resulted in the orbit insertion (OI) burn, which moves Starliner into a stable orbit, not occurring on time.
Additionally, Starliner and its antennae were not oriented properly, again due to the MET error. This created a challenge for ground controllers attempting to command the OI burn, as establishing a data link between NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS) and Starliner was delayed.
Once a positive command link was established, ground controllers commanded the spacecraft to conduct two burns in order to reach a circular 250 kilometer orbit.
While this orbit was stable, it was lower than the International Space Station’s altitude. After reaching a stable orbit, NASA and Boeing evaluated the possibility of maneuvering to the station, but concluded that an insufficient amount of fuel remained on board Starliner to conduct an approach. Starliner burned a significant amount of propellant while maneuvering to a stable orbit and maintaining the incorrect orientation after launch. //
In addition to the two burns conducted to reach Starliner’s 250 km orbit, several small checkout burns of Starliner’s propulsion systems have been successfully conducted. Station keeping and attitude control demonstrations were also completed.
Another major milestone was testing of Starliner’s Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) systems. This included successfully using the VESTA star tracking system for navigation. Also successfully established was a command link from ground controllers through the International Space Station to the Starliner spacecraft.