A second non-flying test flight of Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule – ordered after an initial demonstration mission did not reach the International Space Station – has now been launched from Cape Canaveral in August or September, leaving little room for the first perform flight of the spaceship with astronauts. before the end of the year.
Boeing and NASA officials confirmed the new schedule in recent statements following a delay earlier this year from the test flight’s previous launch date of April 2. problems due to a winter storm in February that affected Boeing’s software lab in Houston.
The CST-100 Starliner spacecraft is one of two commercial crews developed by US industry under contract with NASA. SpaceX is NASA’s other commercial crew contractor, and the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft began flying astronauts to the station last year.
Boeing’s Starliner, meanwhile, is still months away from the initially unplanned second non-flying test flight, and a test flight from the crew is expected at least a few months later.
Officials said external considerations boosted the schedule to launch Boeing’s second Starliner Orbital Flight Test, or OFT-2 mission, in the August / September period.
The Starliner spacecraft uses the same plant ports for space stations as SpaceX’s Dragon crew and cargo ships. One of the ports is currently being taken by a Crew Dragon capsule, and both ports will be occupied for a few days later this month with the handover of one Crew Dragon mission to the next.
SpaceX’s next Dragon cargo mission will be launched on June 3 and will be connected to the space station for about a month and a half to deliver fresh supplies, experiments and a new pair of solar powers. This excludes a plant for Starliner before the second half of July.
The operational crew and cargo missions take precedence over test flights in the space station’s schedule.
NASA and Boeing officials must also find a window into the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 launch schedule at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Unlike SpaceX, which launches Crew Dragon missions on its own Falcon 9 rockets, Boeing has contracted with ULA to raise Starliner crew capsules in orbit.
ULA is a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, but it operates as an independent company and has other customers. The US space force currently has payloads that will launch on three Atlas 5 missions in May, June and August, with a new military missile satellite for a military missile, a menagerie of technological demo experiments and two space surveillance loads.
Boeing earlier booked a launch slot at ULA in early September for the Starliner’s Crew Flight Test – the capsule’s first demonstration mission with astronauts – when the OFT-2 mission was to be launched earlier this year. The launch slot is now available for the OFT-2 mission, and officials do not rule out moving the OFT-2 launch to August if one of the Space Force delays one of its missions.
The launch platform of Atlas 5 will be fixed in late September to much of October with preparations to launch NASA’s robotic Lucy spacecraft on a marathon ride through the solar system to study asteroids. Lucy has a 23-day planetary launch window that opens on October 16, and NASA will prioritize the asteroid probe over the agency’s other missions.
Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said last week that the Starliner spacecraft assigned to the OFT-2 mission is in “good condition” because it is undergoing preparations in a facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. .
“It’s almost ready for launch,” Stich said.
In a statement, Boeing said it would be “mission ready” in May if an opening in the Atlas 5 launch scheme occurs.
“The Starliner team has completed all work on the OFT-2 vehicle, except for activities that need to be carried out closer to launch, such as loading cargo and refilling the spacecraft,” Boeing said. “The team also submitted all the verification and confirmation documents to NASA and completed all recommended actions offered by Independent Review Team, including those that were not mandatory before OFT-2.”
Boeing is taking more time to complete software testing on the Starliner spacecraft, while officials await an opening in the space station schedule and ULA’s launch manifesto, according to Stich. Boeing said in a statement that it expects to complete software simulations, including end-to-end trust and integration testing, before the end of April and will provide the results to NASA observers.
Investigators blamed a software bug for the failure of the OFT-1 mission to dock at the space station in 2019. A mission timer was incorrectly programmed, causing the spacecraft to think it was in a different mission phase when it separated to an Atlas 5 rocket. otherwise successful laying away from Cape Canaveral.
The fault resulted in the Starliner capsule burning more fuel than expected, and consuming the fuel needed to move to the space station. Mission commanders chose to end the mission early, and the spacecraft landed in New Mexico.
Assuming the OFT-2 mission gets off the road in late summer, Stich said the Starliner’s crew flight test could take off ‘by the end of the calendar year’. ‘
The Crew Flight Test will transport NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore, Mike Fincke and Nicole Mann to the space station. They will fly with the same reusable Starliner spacecraft that was launched and landed on Boeing’s first Orbital flight test in December 2019, while the OFT-2 mission will fly on an unused vehicle.
Boeing said its teams were preparing for the “shortest time possible” between the OFT-2 mission and the Crew Flight Test. Wilmore, Fincke and Mann recently boarded and boarded the spacecraft to fly the OFT-2 mission for life support and communications system controls.
Once Boeing has achieved the two remaining Starliner test flights, NASA will certify the capsule for regular rotation missions to the space station, just as the agency did last year for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.
NASA has nearly $ 7 billion in contracts with Boeing and SpaceX to cover the development of the two commercial crewships and six operational crew rotation flights by each company.
With Boeing’s delay, SpaceX is likely to launch four Crew Dragon missions with NASA astronauts – a test flight and three operational launches – before the Starliner flies with humans for the first time.
Steve Jurczyk, acting administrator of NASA, said the agency originally planned to alternate missions between commercial crews between Boeing and SpaceX.
“The plan is currently to alternate – SpaceX, Boeing, SpaceX, Boeing – however, the first flight of the Boeing crew has been delayed, and we will probably have four crew flights with SpaceX before the crew with Boeing has a test flight” Jurczyk said Tuesday. “So maybe we should look into it, but we have not yet managed to talk about it.”
NASA will also soon begin considering how and when to procure more commercial crews to meet the requirements of the space station beyond 2024, he said. But the talks have yet to come.
“We really did not talk in detail about how we are going beyond the current contracts and obligations,” Jurczyk said in an interview with Spaceflight Now.