Boeing plans to launch its CST-100 Starliner space taxi on a second test flight on March 25, company officials announced Monday (January 25).
An Atlas V rocket from the United Launch Alliance will launch the unmanned spacecraft from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, after which Starliner will attempt to meet the International Space Station (ISS) – something the spacecraft could not do during its first test flight. do not. , called Orbital Flight Test-1 (OFT-1) in December 2019.
The upcoming mission, called the Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2), was not originally part of Boeing’s itinerary when the company developed Starliner for NASA’s commercial crew program. But after a series of errors prevented OFT-1 from reaching the ISS and leading to an early landing in New Mexico, NASA and Boeing decided to redo the unmanned test flight before launching Starliner with astronauts on board.
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The announcement of OFT-2’s target launch date comes just one week after Boeing’s Starliner passed a major software qualification test, during which Boeing crews conducted a full software review and several series of tests to verify that Starliner’s software met meet the design specifications, ” Boeing said. in a statement.
“Boeing will also complete an end-to-end simulation of the OFT-2 test flight using flight hardware and final versions of Starliner’s flight software to model the vehicle’s expected behavior before the flight,” the statement said. Boeing has been criticized for not doing such an ‘end-to-end’ test for OFT-1 in 2019, when Starliner was unable to reach the right runway.
If all goes according to plan, OFT-2, the Starliner spacecraft will perform a orbit entry maneuver approximately 31 minutes after takeoff and send the spacecraft en route to the ISS, where it is expected to arrive the next day (approximately 26 hours later) . on rise).
The Starliner will autonomously plant itself at the space station’s Harmony module for about a week, during which the seven staff members of Expedition 64 will unload any cargo on board and inspect the spacecraft. (Starliner may spend several months in orbit, but this mission will be kept short as it is only a test.) Once the orbit stay at the ISS is over, Starliner will autonomously disembark from the station upon return to the earth for a parachute landing in New Mexico.
If Boeing and NASA no longer discover major problems with Starliner during the OFT-2 mission, the first Starliner to fly with astronauts on board could follow as early as June. This mission, called the Crew Flight Test (CFT), will send NASA astronauts Mike Fincke, Nicole Mann and Butch Wilmore to the ISS for a longer stay. NASA did not announce the duration of the CFT mission, but in 2019, the agency said it would be a long-term mission that could potentially last about six months.
The first operational mission to transport astronauts, called Starliner 1, will bring NASA astronauts Jeanette Epps, Sunita Williams and Josh Cassada to the ISS for a six-month stay. The mission is not planned for December 2021 for the time being, NASA officials said in a statement.
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