Boeing's Starliner spacecraft completes its first pad abort test

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WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Boeing completed on Monday a pad abort test of its CST-100 Starliner spacecraft designed to bring astronauts into low-Earth orbit from the United States, demonstrating the spacecraft's ability to quickly escape the launch pad in the event of an emergency on launch day.

At 9:15 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time (1415 GMT), the five-meter, cone-like vehicle in the launch position on White Sands Missile Range in the U.S. state of New Mexico had its four launch abort engines ignited, showed the NASA live broadcast.

The abort engines produced a combined 160,000 pounds (nearly 72,600 kilograms) of thrust, pushing the vehicle away from the stand into an altitude of about a mile (1,609 meters) above the ground. Also, the orbital maneuvering and attitude (OMAC) thrusters kicked in simultaneously to maneuver the spacecraft into the proper orientation for parachute deployment, according to NASA.

The ascent cover and forward heat shield protecting the spacecraft's parachutes jettisoned roughly 19 seconds into flight, and then, drogue parachutes and two main parachutes deployed to slow the descent of the vehicle.

Finally, the Starliner's service module separated from the crew module and the latter touched down with a cushion of inflated airbags about a mile north of the test stand, approximately 90 seconds after the launch, according to NASA.

The spacecraft service module, which has a total of 52 engines including those designed to give small directional changes in orbit, was not planned to and did not survive the test.

"This will be Boeing's first flight test as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program and will help evaluate the performance of the abort system prior to missions to the International Space Station with a crew onboard," according to a NASA statement.

The abort test came over a month ahead of the spacecraft's first unscrewed orbital launch currently scheduled on Dec. 17. The first crewed Starliner mission, which was delayed multiple times since 2017, has now slipped into early 2020.

NASA contracted Boeing and SpaceX to bring American astronauts to the International Space Station with the U.S.-made spacecraft in 2014. SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft completed its debut unmanned flight in March this year, but an engine test in May failed, thus causing a drag on SpaceX plans to launch astronauts to the space lab by the end of year. Enditem

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