Boeing is now organizing to start the second uncrewed examination flight of its CST-100 Starliner spacecraft no before than December, the company announced Friday (Aug. 28).
The mission, called Orbital Flight Check 2 (OFT-2), will be Boeing’s next attempt at launching its new astronaut taxi to the International Place Station, subsequent a partial failure that prevented the Starliner spacecraft from achieving the station for the duration of the OFT-1 mission in December 2019.
After the enterprise has shown that the new area automobile can properly ferry astronauts to and from the space station, it will be able to start out launching astronauts to the orbiting lab as early as June 2021, NASA officers stated in a statement.
Relevant: Boeing’s 1st Starliner flight test in pics
Starliner’s initial crewed mission, called Crew Flight Take a look at, will send NASA astronauts Mike Fincke and Nicole Mann and Boeing astronaut Chris Ferguson to the house station. If that crewed check flight is profitable, Boeing could start out flying operational crewed missions as shortly as December 2021, NASA included in the statement.
Boeing’s 1st operational crewed flight, known as Starliner 1, will bring NASA astronauts Jeanette Epps, Sunita Williams and Josh Cassada to the area station. All Starliner missions will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Power Station in Florida on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.
Boeing and NASA originally planned to fly Starliner’s Crew Flight Check mission in mid-2020, but the mission was delayed just after Boeing resolved to redo the Orbital Flight Take a look at. In the course of its first check flight in December 2019, a sequence of technical difficulties still left the Starliner spacecraft stranded in the incorrect orbit and not able to attain the place station. So, rather of docking with the orbiting lab, Starliner returned to Earth soon after just two times in area.
Subsequent the problematic test flight, NASA and Boeing shaped an impartial assessment workforce to investigate the lead to of OFT-1’s partial failure. That investigation, which wrapped up in July, observed that two major program faults and a non permanent fall in communications through the check flight were being mainly dependable for the partial failure, and the investigators determined 80 “corrective steps” for Boeing to deal with right before the next Starliner mission. Boeing has so far tackled practically 75% of individuals responsibilities, NASA said in the statement.
Though the Starliner spacecraft is made to be reused, Boeing will use a brand new Starliner for the OFT-2 mission. The new capsule will present “supplemental on-orbit working experience for the operational teams prior to traveling missions with astronauts,” NASA stated in the statement. The OFT-1 Starliner capsule, nicknamed “Calypso,” will fly yet again on the Starliner 1 mission.
Boeing has used this summer time assembling the new Starliner capsule for OFT-2 and is now adding a couple finishing touches prior to the spacecraft is prepared to fly. In the meantime, Boeing’s program crew in Houston is wrapping up the modifications to Starliner’s flight codes that had been suggested by the unbiased evaluate workforce. The software program team is presently planning to conduct a thoroughly built-in, conclude-to-close rehearsal test with Starliner and the Atlas V rocket — a examination that Boeing was criticized for skipping right before the problematic OFT-1 mission.
While Boeing is continue to performing to demonstrate that its new astronaut taxi can securely transport crews to and from the space station, SpaceX is gearing up for its first operational Crew Dragon mission to the station, Crew-1, pursuing the firm’s successful Demo-2 mission, which despatched NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the place station in May possibly.
Soon after the house shuttle program ended in 2011, NASA contracted each SpaceX and Boeing to start astronauts from U.S. soil, thereby lessening NASA’s dependence on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft to get astronauts to the space station.
Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@house.com or comply with her on Twitter @hannekescience. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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