Boeing’s second unmanned test flight Starliner spacecraft for NASA will ultimately not be launched on April 2nd.
On Thursday (March 4), NASA and Boeing jointly announced plans to push back the launch of Starliner’s Orbital Flight Test-2 mission from an early April lifting. The flight was already delayed by two weeks from a target on March 25 due to the winter storms in Houston and the need to replace some aviation boxes. It now appears that Starliner can only make it into space later in April.
NASA also weighs the amount of verification and validation required before the test flight and the visiting vehicle schedule. International Space Station, ”Reads the joint statement.
Related: Boeing’s first Starliner flight test on photos
April is already a busy time at the orbit, with a Russian Soyuz crew and NASA SpaceX Crew-2 astronaut mission. As things stand now, there is no room for Boeing to reschedule from April 2 to ‘later in April’, the statement added, but a new launch date has not yet been set.
OFT-2 will be an important milestone in the Starliner program, as Boeing wants to recover in December 2019 from a flawed mission, which could not achieve the purpose of the space station. NASA identified 80 items for correction before a new launch could take place, and Boeing paid attention to everything for several months.
“The company has held drought ahead of an end-to-end mission rehearsal that will enable the operations team to practice,” according to the NASA statement, adding that the team will also watch what happens during an entire simulated mission.
“In addition, the initial test and completion of the OFT-2 vehicle, with new aircraft cabinets installed, was successfully completed,” the update continued, adding that fuel and “stacking” of spacecraft (or rocket assembly) are ready to begin soon .
NASA plans to SpaceX Crew Dragon and the Boeing Starliner to fly most American astronauts to the space station, which will be largely replaced by the dependence on the Russian Soyuz capsule that brought everyone into space after the exit of the space station program between 2011 and 2020. The new spaceship for commercial crew, each has four people, from three seats in a Soyuz, enabling the station to pursue more scientific and commercial opportunities with future larger crew members.
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