Set your clock correctly before you launch into space.

[Fly320s]

Otherwise, you will fail your mission.

https://www.foxnews.com/science/boeing-starliner-spacecraft-returns-after-failed-mission

I'm surprised the clock needed to be set at all.  I assumed they would just auto-synch it to Zulu time via GPS or something similar.

[Ben]

I saw the headline that it failed, but didn't see until your post as to why. That is a really interesting failure point for a 21st century spacecraft. They wouldn't be able to use GPS for synching anytime past liftoff, but I would think there would be a "master clock" with backup on the spacecraft that all timing devices talk too.

I should edit: They could use GPS in low enough orbits, but I'm not sure how accurate it would be as you get closer to the GPS constellation orbits.

[zxcvbob]

I saw the headline that it failed, but didn't see until your post as to why. That is a really interesting failure point for a 21st century spacecraft. They wouldn't be able to use GPS for synching anytime past liftoff, but I would think there would be a "master clock" with backup on the spacecraft that all timing devices talk too.

I should edit: They could use GPS in low enough orbits, but I'm not sure how accurate it would be as you get closer to the GPS constellation orbits.

There should be a master clock for the mission somewhere that everything syncs to.  It wouldn't have to be GPS; probably just a clock in Houston or Huntsville, and another master on the spacecraft that is subservient to and synced to the one on the ground.  In fact, it seems hard to not get that right. :/  The mission clock would probably set to the atomic clock WWVB (is that in Boulder or Ft Collins?)

[ConstitutionCowboy]

They shoulda installed a Timex ... 

Woody

[230RN]

The atomic clock is in Boulder* and sends its signals to WWV in Fort Collins over a subchannel of TV channel 4, as of my recollection of 10 years ago.   I don't remember if WWV-H in Hawaii has an independent clock or derives its time somehow from the Boulder/Fort Collins system.

It sounds almost as if there were some kind of relativity experiment involved which would require two independently set clocks.

Or, one clock was set for Standard Time, the other for Daylight Time.

Terry

* In the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) building.  The Boulder Amateur Radio Club (BARC) used to have its meetings in that building and whenever I walked in, I'd look at my watch, then point at the big display in the lobby showing the atomic clock time,  and mouth "It's slow" at the guards. 

Part of the WWV antenna farm in Fort Collins:

http://braddye.com/images/wwv_antenna_farm.jpg

[HankB]

Somebody probably mixed up English time and Metric time.

[MillCreek]

On the plus side, the Starliner had a successful landing on the White Sands missile range in New Mexico.  The first US manned spacecraft designed to land on dry land.  Parachutes plus airbags that deploy right before touchdown.  Supposed to be much quicker and cheaper to refurbish for additional flights as opposed to a saltwater splashdown.

[Fly320s]

And no chance that those pesky explosive bolts "just blew," and sank the capsule.

[MechAg94]

The flight was aborted because the capsule's clock was not synced up properly with the timing on the rocket — and it ultimately ended up in the wrong orbit.

Shortly after its launch on Friday, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted the Starliner "had a Mission Elapsed Time (MET) anomaly causing the spacecraft to believe that it was in an orbital insertion burn, when it was not."

“We started the clock at the wrong time,” Jim Chilton, a senior vice president for Boeing, said Saturday. “As a result of starting the clock at the wrong time, the spacecraft upon reaching space thought she was later in the mission and, being autonomous, started to behave that way.”

Clock or timer?  I guess it doesn't matter.  Seems to me there should have been some sort of on-going handshake so they would know of this error either prior to liftoff or pretty soon after.

[AZRedhawk44]

This is pretty bad.

Starliner did a Pad Abort test in WSMR a couple months back.  The abort trigger happened manually and no Atlas/Centaur computer was involved.

If Starliner cannot poll Atlas for the Mission Elapsed Time correctly, it's also entirely possible that it cannot poll Atlas for Flight Termination Signal correctly, endangering correct function of the Abort system either on the pad or partway through flight.