Spirit Aerosystems builds aircraft components, including fuselages and flight deck sections for Boeing, according to Wikipedia. But now Boeing is set to acquire Spirit AeroSystems.

The aviation blog called Aviation Source News says the price tag was $4.7 billion, and opines that Boeing's move signals "a renewed focus on quality and supply chain stability" as Boeing "addresses lingering concerns surrounding its 737 program." Spirit's recent struggles with quality control and production delays have had a fallout effect for Boeing... By integrating Spirit's operations, Boeing can implement more stringent oversight and ensure consistent manufacturing processes. This move is a direct response to past quality lapses that have plagued the company and damaged its reputation. Beyond quality control, the acquisition also offers Boeing greater control over its supply chain. By bringing a key supplier in-house, Boeing can streamline production, improve coordination, and reduce the risk of future disruptions...

Spirit AeroSystems also supplies parts to Airbus, Boeing's main competitor. To address this, a separate agreement is being negotiated for Airbus to acquire Spirit's Airbus-related business. This strategic move ensures that Airbus maintains control over its own supply chain and prevents Boeing from gaining undue influence over its competitor's production.
Meanwhile, the vice president leading Boeing's Starliner spacecraft unit "has left his role in the program and been replaced by the company's International Space Station program manager, John Mulholland," Reuters reports, citing a Boeing spokesperson. In its first test mission last summer flying astronauts, Starliner was forced by NASA to leave its crew aboard the ISS and return empty in September over problems with its propulsion system. A panel of senior NASA officials in August had voted to have a Crew Dragon capsule from Elon Musk's SpaceX bring them back instead, deeming Starliner too risky for the astronauts.

Paul Hill, a veteran NASA flight director and member of the agency's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, said during a quarterly panel meeting on Thursday that NASA and Boeing continue to investigate Starliner's propulsion system. A Boeing spokesperson said on Thursday that the company and NASA have not yet determined what Starliner's next mission will look like, such as whether it will need to repeat its crewed flight test before receiving NASA certification for routine flights.

"Private space stations have been raising billions of dollars in an effort to build future hubs — and even one day cities — in orbit," according to a recent report from the U.K. newspaper, the Telegraph: Axiom Space, a US business aiming to build its own station, has raised more than $500m (£400m). Vast, a space business backed by crypto billionaire Jed McCaleb, is plotting two stations before the end of the decade. Gravitics, meanwhile, has raised tens of millions of dollars for its modular space "real estate". Nasa itself, along with other space agencies, is planning a further station, Lunar Gateway, which will orbit the Moon. Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin has also announced plans to build a space station by 2027, called Orbital Reef, which it has described as an orbital "mixed-use business park". Working with US aerospace business Sierra Space, Orbital Reef will be made up of inflatable pods, which can be launched on a regular rocket before being "blown up" in space. Sierra Space says these modules could house in-space manufacturing or pharmaceutical technology...

Since 2021, Nasa has also offered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to private companies to develop commercial space stations that could succeed the ISS. So far, it has handed $400m to companies including Axiom, Blue Origin (which is working with Sierra Space), and Northrop Grumman... Vast hopes to launch its first space station, Haven-1, as soon as 2025. This simple module will be the first privately-run space station and will be occupied by a crew of four over four two week expeditions... While Vast was not one of the businesses to secure funding from Nasa, it hopes by launching the first proof-of-concept space station as soon as next year it can leapfrog rival efforts and claim the agency as an anchor customer. From there, it can target other space agencies or companies looking to conduct research.
Some interesting perspectives from the article:

• Chris Quilty, an analyst at Quilty Space: "If China were not building its own space station it is arguable whether Nasa would have felt enjoined to maintain a human presence in low Earth orbit."

• Tim Farrar, founder of TMF Associates, which advises some of the world's top space companies: "Unless they either secure government funding or focus on space tourism, they will inevitably have to rely on the largess of either billionaires or gullible investors who are space enthusiasts."

Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the news.

fjo3 shares a report from the Washington Post: The International Space Station had to fire thrusters from a docked spacecraft last month to avoid a piece of debris that has been circling the globe for the nearly 18 years since the Chinese government blasted apart one of its own satellites in a weapons test. The evasive maneuver was the second in just six days for the space station, which has four NASA astronauts and three Russian cosmonauts aboard. That is the shortest interval ever between such actions, illustrating the slowly worsening problem of space junk in orbit. Debris is an increasingly vexing issue not only for NASA, but also for companies such as SpaceX and OneWeb seeking to protect the thousands of small satellites they send into space to provide high-speed internet. The debris cloud from China's 2007 destruction of the Fengyun 1C satellite remains one of the most persistent threats in orbit, with about 3,500 fragments still posing collision risks to spacecraft. Since 2020, the ISS has performed 15 debris-avoidance maneuvers.

The evasive maneuver was performed after a Space Force warning. According to the report, Space Force now tracks over 47,200 objects in orbit, issuing approximately 23 daily collision warnings -- up from just six per day five years ago.

Axiom Space has revised its plan for assembling its commercial space station by launching the Payload, Power, and Thermal module first, enabling it to operate as a free-flying platform as early as 2028 -- two years ahead of the original timeline. Space.com reports: NASA awarded Axiom Space a contract in 2020 to attach one or more modules to the International Space Station (ISS), which is set to retire by 2030 at the earliest. The original plan called for Axiom to detach a multi-module group from the ISS, creating a commercial outpost in low Earth orbit that will continue operating after the ISS is gone. But that plan has now been altered.

To create its space station, Axiom plans to launch five modules: a payload/power/thermal element, an airlock, a research/manufacturing hub, and a pair of habitat modules. The original plan was for Axiom to launch the Habitat 1 module to the ISS first, followed by the additional elements. The new assembly sequence will see the Payload, Power and Thermal module launch to the ISS first. This module could detach from the station -- and become a free flyer called Axiom Station -- as soon as 2028, according to the company. After that happens, Axiom will continue assembling the outpost, launching the Habitat 1 module to meet up with it. Habitat 1 will be followed by the airlock, the Habitat 2 module, and then the research and manufacturing facility. Angela Hart, a manager for the Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said: "The updated assembly sequence has been coordinated with NASA to support both NASA and Axiom Space needs and plans for a smooth transition in low Earth orbit."

NASA has delayed the launch of SpaceX Crew-10 to late March 2025 to allow time for processing a new Dragon spacecraft, extending the stay of astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on the ISS to about nine months. CNN reports: Williams and Wilmore launched to space in June, piloting the first crewed test flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft. Their trip, expected to last about a week, ballooned into a monthslong assignment after their vehicle experienced technical issues en route to the space station and NASA determined it would be too risky to bring them home aboard the Starliner.

The astronauts have since joined Crew-9, a routine space station mission originally slated to return to Earth no earlier than February after a handoff period with Crew-10. Now, Crew-10 will get off the ground at least a month later than expected because NASA and SpaceX teams need "time to complete processing on a new Dragon spacecraft for the mission," according to the space agency. "NASA and SpaceX assessed various options for managing the next crewed handover, including using another Dragon spacecraft," NASA noted in a blog post on Tuesday. "After careful consideration, the team determined that launching Crew-10 in late March, following completion of the new Dragon spacecraft, was the best option for meeting NASA's requirements and achieving space station objectives for 2025."

Scripps Research scientists sent stem-cell-derived brain organoids to the ISS to study the effects of microgravity on brain cells, finding that the organoids matured faster and showed signs of specialization compared to Earth-grown controls. The findings have been published in the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine. Phys.Org reports: To examine how the space environment impacts cellular functions, the team compared the cells' RNA expression patterns -- a measure of gene activity -- to identical "ground control" organoids that had remained on Earth. Surprisingly, they found that the organoids grown in microgravity had higher levels of genes associated with maturity and lower levels of genes associated with proliferation compared to the ground controls, meaning that the cells exposed to microgravity developed faster and replicated less than those on Earth. "We discovered that in both types of organoids, the gene expression profile was characteristic of an older stage of development than the ones that were on the ground," [says co-senior author Jeanne Loring, Ph.D., professor emeritus in the Department of Molecular Medicine and founding director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at Scripps Research]. "In microgravity, they developed faster, but it's really important to know these were not adult neurons, so this doesn't tell us anything about aging."

The team also noted that contrary to their hypothesis, there was less inflammation and lower expression of stress-related genes in organoids grown in microgravity, but more research is needed to determine why. Loring speculates that microgravity conditions may more closely mirror the conditions experienced by cells within the brain compared to organoids grown under conventional lab conditions and in the presence of gravity. "The characteristics of microgravity are probably also at work in people's brains, because there's no convection in microgravity -- in other words, things don't move," says Loring. "I think that in space, these organoids are more like the brain because they're not getting flushed with a whole bunch of culture medium or oxygen. They're very independent; they form something like a brainlet, a microcosm of the brain." "The next thing we plan to do is to study the part of the brain that's most affected by Alzheimer's disease," says Loring. "We also want to know whether there are differences in the way neurons connect with each other in space. With these kinds of studies, you can't rely on earlier work to predict what the result would be because there is no earlier work. We're on the ground floor, so to speak; in the sky, but on the ground floor."

An anonymous reader shared this report from Reuters: The rapid increase in satellites and space junk will make low Earth orbit unusable unless companies and countries cooperate and share the data needed to manage that most accessible region of space, experts and industry insiders said. A United Nations panel on space traffic coordination in late October determined that urgent action was necessary and called for a comprehensive shared database of orbital objects as well as an international framework to track and manage them. More than 14,000 satellites including some 3,500 inactive surround the globe in low Earth orbit, showed data from U.S.-based Slingshot Aerospace. Alongside those are about 120 million pieces of debris from launches, collisions and wear-and-tear of which only a few thousand are large enough to track... [T]here is no centralised system that all space-faring nations can leverage and even persuading them to use such a system has many obstacles. Whereas some countries are willing to share data, others fear compromising security, particularly as satellites are often dual-use and include defence purposes. Moreover, enterprises are keen to guard commercial secrets.

In the meantime, the mess multiplies. A Chinese rocket stage exploded in August, adding thousands of fragments of debris to low Earth orbit. In June, a defunct Russian satellite exploded, scattering thousands of shards which forced astronauts on the International Space Station to take shelter for an hour... Projections point to tens of thousands more satellites entering orbit in the coming years. The potential financial risk of collisions is likely to be $556 million over five years, based on a modelled scenario with a 3.13% annual collision probability and $111 million in yearly damages, said Montreal-based NorthStar Earth & Space...

[Aarti Holla-Maini, director of the U.N . Office for Outer Space Affairs], said the October panel aimed to bring together public- and private-sector experts to outline steps needed to start work on coordination. It will present its findings at a committee meeting next year. Global cooperation is essential to developing enforceable rules akin to those used by the International Civil Aviation Organization for air traffic, industry experts told Reuters. Such effort would involve the use of existing tools, such as databases, telescopes, radars and other sensors to track objects while improving coverage, early detection and data precision. Yet geopolitical tension and reluctance to share data with nations deemed unfriendly as well as commercial concerns over protecting proprietary information and competitive advantages remain significant barriers. That leaves operators of orbital equipment relying on informal or semi-formal methods of avoiding collisions, such as drawing on data from the U.S. Space Force or groups like the Space Data Association. However, this can involve issues such as accountability and inconsistent data standards.

"The top challenges are speed — as consensus-building takes time — and trust," Holla-Maini said. "Some countries simply can't communicate with others, but the U.N. can facilitate this process. Speed is our biggest enemy, but there's no alternative. It must be done."
Data from Slingshot Aerospace shows a 17% rise in close approaches per satellite over the past year, according to the article. (It adds that SpaceX data "showed Starlink satellites performed nearly 50,000 collision-avoidance manoeuvres in the first half of 2024, about double the previous six months...)

The European Space Agency, which has fewer spacecraft than SpaceX, said in 2021 its manoeuvres have increased to three or four times per craft versus a historical average of one."

India plans to build a moon-orbiting space station by 2040 that will support crewed missions to the moon and serve as a hub for scientific research. Space Magazine reports: If all goes according to plan, the lunar space station will be completed around the same time the nation's astronauts land on the moon, with construction of a permanent base on the surface before 2050. The lunar space station appears to be the third and final phase of India's moon exploration efforts. [...]

The lunar space station may be similar to the one India plans to build in Earth orbit, known as the Bharatiya Antariksh Station, or BAS. The development of this station's first module, BAS-1, was greenlit by the Indian government in September. Officials have said the first module will be launched to low Earth orbit by 2028, and the entire station will be operational by 2035.

"NASA has emphasized the ISS crew is in no immediate danger," reports Space.com. "The leaking area in the Russian segment of the orbital complex has been ongoing for five years," and "there was a temporary increase in the leak rate that was patched earlier this year..."

Former astronaut Bob Cabana emphasized that troubleshooting is ongoing during a brief livestreamed meeting on Wednesday. But NASA and Roscosmos "don't have a common understanding of what the likely root causes or the severity of the consequences of these leaks." "The Russian position is that the most probable cause of the cracks is high cycling caused by micro-vibrations," Cabana said, referring to flexing of metal and similar components that heat and cool as the ISS orbits in and out of sunlight. "NASA believes the PrK cracks are likely multi-causal — including pressure and mechanical stress, residual stress, material properties and environmental exposures," Cabana continued.

NASA and Russia disagree about whether "continued operations are safe", he added, but the remedy for now is to keep the hatch closed between the U.S. and Russian side as investigations continue.

The two agencies will continue meeting to seek "common understanding of the structural integrity", Cabana pledged, but he did not provide a timeline. Academic and industry experts will also be consulted.

"After safely splashing down on Earth as part of NASA's SpaceX Crew-8 mission Friday, a NASA astronaut experienced a medical issue," NASA reported Friday.

But today there's an update: After an overnight stay at Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola in Florida, the NASA astronaut was released and returned to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston Saturday. The crew member is in good health and will resume normal post-flight reconditioning with other crew members.

As part of NASA's SpaceX Crew-8 mission [SpaceX's eighth crew-rotation mission to the ISS], the astronaut was one of four crewmates who safely splashed down aboard their SpaceX Dragon spacecraft near Pensacola on October 25. The crew members completed a 235-day mission, 232 days of which were spent aboard the International Space Station conducting scientific research.

To protect the crew member's medical privacy, specific details on the individual's condition and identity will not be shared.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Boeing is weighing the sale of its space division. "The plans, which are reportedly at an early stage, could involve Boeing offloading the Starliner spacecraft and its projects supporting the International Space Station," reports The Verge. From the report: Boeing is facing a series of predicaments, including a fraud charge over 737 Max plane crashes and Starliner issues that left two astronauts at the ISS for months. Just this week, a Boeing-made satellite for Intelsat stopped working and fell apart suddenly after suffering an "anomaly."

"We're better off doing less and doing it better than doing more and not doing it well," Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said during an earnings call this week. "Clearly, our core of commercial airplanes and defense systems are going to stay with the Boeing Company for the long run. But there's probably some things on the fringe there that we can be more efficient with or that distract us from our main goal here."

However, sources tell the WSJ that Boeing will likely continue to oversee the Space Launch System, which will eventually help bring NASA astronauts back to the Moon. It's also reportedly expected to hang onto its commercial and military satellite businesses.

Four astronauts splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday after their record ISS mission stretched to eight months due to Boeing capsule malfunctions and hurricane disruptions. The SpaceX Dragon capsule landed off Florida's coast before dawn, carrying NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin.

Technical issues with Boeing's Starliner capsule in September, followed by Hurricane Milton and persistent rough seas, delayed their planned return by two months. The crew launched in March as part of NASA's commercial crew program. Their replacements include Boeing Starliner test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, whose mission expanded from eight days to eight months, alongside two SpaceX-launched astronauts. The new crew will remain aboard the station until February.

NASA will rely on SpaceX's Crew Dragon for two crewed missions to the ISS in 2025 while evaluating whether Boeing's Starliner requires another test flight for certification. SpaceNews reports: In an Oct. 15 statement, NASA said it will use Crew Dragon for both the Crew-10 mission to the ISS, scheduled for no earlier than February 2025, and the Crew-11 mission scheduled for no earlier than July. Crew-10 will fly NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers along with astronaut Takuya Onishi from the Japanese space agency JAXA and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. NASA has not yet announced the crew for the Crew-11 mission.

Earlier this year, NASA had hoped that Boeing's CST-100 Starliner would be certified in time to fly the early 2025 mission. Problems with the Crew Flight Test mission, which launched in June with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board, led NASA to conclude in July that the spacecraft would not be certified in time. It delayed that Starliner-1 mission from February to August 2025, moving up Crew-10 to February. NASA also announced then that it would prepare Crew-11 in parallel with Starliner-1 for launch in that August 2025 slot. "The timing and configuration of Starliner's next flight will be determined once a better understanding of Boeing's path to system certification is established," NASA said in its statement about the 2025 missions. "NASA is keeping options on the table for how best to achieve system certification, including windows of opportunity for a potential Starliner flight in 2025."

"SpaceX has temporarily grounded its Falcon 9 rocket," reports Space.com, "after the vehicle experienced an issue on the Crew-9 astronaut launch for NASA." Crew-9 lifted off on Saturday (Sept. 28) from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, sending NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov aloft aboard the Crew Dragon capsule "Freedom" [for a 5-month stay, returning in February with Starliner's two astronauts]. Everything appeared to go well. The Falcon 9's first stage aced its landing shortly after liftoff, and the rocket's upper stage deployed Freedom into its proper orbit; the capsule is on track to arrive at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday afternoon (Sept. 29) as planned. But the upper stage experienced an issue after completing that job, SpaceX announced early Sunday morning.

"After today's successful launch of Crew-9, Falcon 9's second stage was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn. As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area. We will resume launching after we better understand root cause," SpaceX wrote in a post on X.

Indeed, a Falcon 9 had been scheduled to launch 20 broadband satellites for the company Eutelsat OneWeb from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Sunday night, but that liftoff has been postponed.

Ars Technica reports NASA officials operating the International Space Station "are seriously concerned about a small Russian part of the station" — because it's leaking.

The "PrK" tunnel connecting a larger module to a docking port "has been leaking since September 2019... In February of this year NASA identified an increase in the leak rate from less than 1 pound of atmosphere a day to 2.4 pounds a day, and in April this rate increased to 3.7 pounds a day." A new report, published Thursday by NASA's inspector general, provides details not previously released by the space agency that underline the severity of the problem...

Despite years of investigation, neither Russian nor US officials have identified the underlying cause of the leak. "Although the root cause of the leak remains unknown, both agencies have narrowed their focus to internal and external welds," the report, signed by Deputy Inspector General George A. Scott, states. The plan to mitigate the risk is to keep the hatch on the Zvezda module leading to the PrK tunnel closed. Eventually, if the leak worsens further, this hatch might need to be closed permanently, reducing the number of Russian docking ports on the space station from four to three.

Publicly, NASA has sought to minimize concerns about the cracking issue because it remains, to date, confined to the PrK tunnel and has not spread to other parts of the station. Nevertheless, Ars reported in June that the cracking issue has reached the highest level of concern on the space agency's 5x5 "risk matrix" to classify the likelihood and consequence of risks to spaceflight activities. The Russian leaks are now classified as a "5" both in terms of high likelihood and high consequence.
"According to NASA, Roscosmos is confident they will be able to monitor and close the hatch to the Service Module prior to the leak rate reaching an untenable level. However, NASA and Roscosmos have not reached an agreement on the point at which the leak rate is untenable."

The article adds that the Space Station should reach its end of life by either 2028 or 2030, and NASA "intends to transition its activities in low-Earth orbit onto private space stations," and has funded Axiom Space, Blue Origin, and Voyager Space for initial development.

"There is general uncertainty as to whether any of the private space station operators will be ready in 2030."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC News: Stranded astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams said Friday it was hard to watch their Boeing capsule return to Earth without them. It was their first public comments since last week's return of the Boeing Starliner capsule that took them to the International Space Station in June. They remained behind after NASA determined the problem-plagued capsule posed too much risk for them to ride back in. "That's how it goes in this business," said Williams, adding that "you have to turn the page and look at the next opportunity."

Wilmore and Williams are now full-fledged station crew members, chipping in on routine maintenance and experiments. They, along with seven others on board, welcomed a Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russians and an American earlier this week, temporarily raising the station population to 12, a near record. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams spoke to the press on Friday for the first time since their Boeing Starliner capsule returned to Earth without them. The two, who have been on the International Space Station since June 6, said they are taking the mission's unexpected extension into 2025 in stride -- even if it means they've had to change their voting plans. The transition to station life was "not that hard" since both had previous stints there, said Williams, who will soon take over as station commander. "This is my happy place. I love being up here in space," she said.

The two Starliner test pilots -- both retired U.S. navy captains and longtime NASA astronauts — will stay at the orbiting laboratory until late February. They have to wait for a SpaceX capsule to bring them back. That spacecraft is due to launch later this month with a reduced crew of two, with two empty seats for Wilmore and Williams for the return leg. The duo said they appreciated all the prayers and well wishes from strangers back home. Wilmore said he will miss out on family milestones such as being around for his youngest daughter's final year of high school. The astronauts, who prepared for eight days in space, will now be up there for eight months, which could have a greater impact on the body. "It is a bit of a change from a sprint to a marathon," said Dr. Adam Sirek of the Canadian Society of Aerospace Medicine.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: A daredevil billionaire rocketed back into orbit Tuesday, aiming to perform the first private spacewalk and venture farther than anyone since NASA's Apollo moonshots. Unlike his previous chartered flight, tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman shared the cost with SpaceX this time around, which included developing and testing brand new spacesuits to see how they'll hold up in the harsh vacuum. If all goes as planned, it will be the first time private citizens conduct a spacewalk, but they won't venture away from the capsule. Considered one of the riskiest parts of spaceflight, spacewalks have been the sole realm of professional astronauts since the former Soviet Union popped open the hatch in 1965, closely followed by the U.S. Today, they are routinely done at the International Space Station.

Isaacman, along with a pair of SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbirds pilot, launched before dawn aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. The spacewalk is scheduled for Thursday, midway through the five-day flight. But first the passengers are shooting for way beyond the International Space Station -- an altitude of 870 miles (1,400 kilometers), which would surpass the Earth-lapping record set during NASA's Project Gemini in 1966. Only the 24 Apollo astronauts who flew to the moon have ventured farther. The plan is to spend 10 hours at that height -- filled with extreme radiation and riddled with debris -- before reducing the oval-shaped orbit by half. Even at this lower 435 miles (700 kilometers), the orbit would eclipse the space station and even the Hubble Space Telescope, the highest shuttle astronauts flew.

All four wore SpaceX's spacewalking suits because the entire Dragon capsule will be depressurized for the two-hour spacewalk, exposing everyone to the dangerous environment. Isaacman and SpaceX's Sarah Gillis will take turns briefly popping out of the hatch. They'll test their white and black-trimmed custom suits by twisting their bodies. Both will always have a hand or foot touching the capsule or attached support structure that resembles the top of a pool ladder. There will be no dangling at the end of their 12-foot (3.6-meter) tethers and no jetpack showboating. Only NASA's suits at the space station come equipped with jetpacks, for emergency use only.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has successfully 3D printed the first metal part aboard the International Space Station. This achievement marks a significant advancement in in-orbit manufacturing that could enable the production of essential spare parts and tools for future long-duration space missions. "The first metal shape was produced in August, and three more are planned as part of the experiment," notes The Register. "All four will eventually be returned to Earth for analysis -- two to ESA's technical center, ESTEC, in the Netherlands, one to the agency's astronaut training center in Cologne, and the last sample to the Technical University of Denmark." From the report: During a panel discussion following the UK premiere of Fortitude, a film about the emerging commercial space industry, Advenit Makaya, Advanced Manufacturing Engineer at ESA, remarked on the potential for recycling space debris in the process rather than having to rely on raw materials launched to the ISS. Rob Postema, ESA Project Manager for Metal 3D, told The Register that the agency was indeed looking at "circular" solutions in its drive for greater sustainability. However, don't hold your breath for putting bits of space garbage into one end and getting shiny metal parts out of the other: "A timeline is difficult to indicate, some early results are achieved with ground activities, ready to evaluate solutions in space."

The printer is overseen from the ground and operated for around four hours per day. The ground team has to check each layer via images and a scan of the surface area; printing a sample can take 10-25 days. However, Postema said: "Through automated control of the printing process as well as continuous operations, this can be substantially reduced." Knick-knacks from orbits are all well and good, but could something more substantial be produced? Yes, although not with this demonstrator, which can print to the outer dimensions of a soft drink can. Postema noted that while the demonstrator could manage smaller parts, either as a single unit or as part of larger structures, "there are definitely opportunities to create 3D shapes and parts with this technology larger than what we have done with this Technology Demonstrator."

Boeing's "beleaguered" Starliner spacecraft "successfully landed in New Mexico just after midnight Eastern time," reports NPR: After Starliner made a picture-perfect landing, Stich told reporters that the spacecraft did well during its return flight. "It was a bullseye landing," he said. "It's really great to get the spacecraft back...." He said while he and others on the team felt happy about the successful landing, "there's a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would've been the way we had planned it" with astronauts on board when it landed...

Now that Starliner is back on the ground, Boeing and NASA will further analyze the thrusters to see if modifying the spacecraft or how it's flown could keep the thrusters from overheating in the future.
Futurism explains why NASA wanted an uncrewed Starliner flight: While attempting to duplicate the issue at NASA's White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, engineers eventually found what appeared to be the smoking gun, as SpaceNews' Jeff Foust details in a detailed new breakdown of the timeline. A Teflon seal in a valve known as a "poppet" expanded as it was being heated by the nearby thrusters, significantly constraining the flow of the oxidizer — a disturbing finding, because it greatly degraded the thrusters' performance.

Worse, without being able to perfectly replicate and analyze the issue in the near vacuum of space, engineers weren't entirely sure how the issue was actually playing out in orbit... While engineers found that the thrusters had returned to a more regular shape after being fired in space, they were worried that similar deformations might take place during prolonged de-orbit firings.

A lot was on the line. Without perfect control over the thrusters, NASA became worried that the spacecraft could careen out of control. "For me, one of the really important factors is that we just don't know how much we can use the thrusters on the way back home before we encounter a problem," NASA associate administrator for space operations Ken Bowersox said, as quoted by SpaceNews.
Now CBS News reports that "the road ahead is far from clear" for Starliner: The service module was jettisoned as planned before re-entry, burning up in the atmosphere, and engineers will not be able to examine the hardware to pin down exactly what caused the helium leaks and degraded thruster performance during the ship's rendezvous with the station. Instead, they will face more data analysis, tests and potential redesigns expected to delay the next flight, with or without astronauts aboard, to late next year at the earliest.

"Even though it was necessary to return the spacecraft uncrewed, NASA and Boeing learned an incredible amount about Starliner in the most extreme environment possible," Ken Bowersox, space operations director at NASA Headquarters, said in a statement. "NASA looks forward to our continued work with the Boeing team to proceed toward certification of Starliner for crew rotation missions to the space station," Bowersox added. In any case, the successful landing was a shot in the arm for Boeing engineers and managers, who insisted the Starliner could have safely brought Wilmore and Williams back to Earth.

Steve Stich, manager of NASA's commercial crew program, agreed that if the crew had been on board "it would have been a safe, successful landing."
Two details about the astronauts now waiting for their February return flight from the International Space Station.

• NPR reports that "in case the space station suffers an emergency that forces an evacuation before that capsule arrives, the station's crew had to jerry-rig two extra seats in a different SpaceX spacecraft that's currently docked there."

• Space.com reports that when the uncrewed Starliner returned, "Among the gear that it carried home were the 'Boeing Blue' spacesuits that Williams and Wilmore wore aboard the capsule. The astronauts have no need for them now. "The suits are not compatible," Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said during a press conference on Wednesday (Sept. 4). "So the Starliner suits would not work in Dragon, and vice versa."

An anonymous reader shared this report from Ars Technica: On Saturday NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore noticed some strange noises emanating from a speaker inside the Starliner spacecraft.

"I've got a question about Starliner," Wilmore radioed down to Mission Control, at Johnson Space Center in Houston. "There's a strange noise coming through the speaker ... I don't know what's making it." [Ars Technica embeded a clip of the conversation including the rhythmic, sonar-like noise which was shared online by a Michigan-based meteorologist.] Wilmore said he was not sure if there was some oddity in the connection between the station and the spacecraft causing the noise, or something else. He asked the flight controllers in Houston to see if they could listen to the audio inside the spacecraft. A few minutes later, Mission Control radioed back that they were linked via "hardline" to listen to audio inside Starliner, which has now been docked to the International Space Station for nearly three months.

Wilmore, apparently floating in Starliner, then put his microphone up to the speaker inside Starliner. Shortly thereafter, there was an audible pinging that was quite distinctive. "Alright Butch, that one came through," Mission control radioed up to Wilmore. "It was kind of like a pulsing noise, almost like a sonar ping."

"I'll do it one more time, and I'll let y'all scratch your heads and see if you can figure out what's going on," Wilmore replied. The odd, sonar-like audio then repeated itself. "Alright, over to you. Call us if you figure it out."