The second test flight for Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule, known as the Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) mission, will not start until late this summer. After months of delays, NASA and Boeing have rescheduled the launch from April to no earlier than August, citing severe weather and technical issues with the spacecraft’s avionics.
Boeing would be ready to launch the unmanned Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station in May if an earlier opportunity arose, the company said in a statement. However, a May launch would depend on the schedule of the space station’s other service missions, the availability of the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket and the Eastern Range spaceport, the company added.
“The Starliner team has completed all work on the OFT-2 vehicle, except for those activities to be performed closer to launch, such as loading cargo and fueling the spacecraft,” Boeing said in the statement. “The team has also submitted all verification and validation papers to NASA and is completing all actions recommended by the Independent Review Team, including those that were not required prior to OFT-2.”
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After a failed initial test flight in December 2019, with Starliner failing to reach the International Space Station, a NASA review team discovered 80 problems that Boeing needed to solve, mainly in Starliner’s software. This failure has delayed the first Crew Flight Test (CFT), now starting in September at the earliest. The CFT mission will fly NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore, Nicole Mann and Mike Fincke.
The company’s engineers are currently running software simulations, including end-to-end confidence and integration tests that serve as a dress rehearsal for the mission for future Starliner flights. Boeing said it expects to complete all software tests in April.
The Starliner team is already preparing for CFT and recently conducted an exercise with astronauts who climbed and aboard the OFT-2 spacecraft for fully integrated and powered monitoring of life support and communication systems.
NASA’s Commercial Crew Program awarded Boeing a $ 4.2 billion contract in 2014 to launch two to six manned missions to the International Space Station on its new Starliner spacecraft. At the same time, SpaceX received a similar contract, worth $ 2.6 billion, to launch NASA astronauts on its Crew Dragon spacecraft.
SpaceX is currently preparing to launch its second astronaut operational mission, called Crew-2, on Thursday, April 22. The company has already successfully completed both an unmanned and manned test flight to the space station on Crew Dragon. SpaceX’s first fully operational mission with four astronauts, called Crew-1, was launched to the station in November 2020 and will return to Earth on April 28.
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