Starliner's first crewed flight would come nearly a year after
the spacecraft flew to the space station and back without any
humans in March, completing a critical demonstration mission for
NASA on its second try after software failures cut short a
similar test flight in 2019.
Boeing and NASA expect to fly the crewed mission after engineers
correct issues encountered during Starliner's March test flight,
including a few onboard thruster failures during the
spacecraft's ascent to orbit that the company's Starliner boss,
Mark Nappi, attributed to debris.
"Currently we're targeting a launch date as early as February of
2023," Steve Stich, head of the NASA program that oversees
Starliner's development, told reporters in a joint news
conference with Boeing.
The crewed Starliner capsule is expected to integrate with its
Atlas 5 rocket in November, Nappi said, once NASA approves of
Boeing's fixes to the thruster issues. The Atlas 5 launch
vehicle was built by a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed
Martin.
The eight-day mission, transporting NASA astronauts Barry
Wilmore and Sunita Williams to the station and back, would mark
the final test mission before NASA can certify Starliner for
routine astronaut missions.
Once certified, the capsule would become NASA's second option
for getting astronauts to and from the station, joining SpaceX's
Crew Dragon spacecraft, which was certified in 2020.
Boeing is under a $4.5 billion fixed-price NASA contract for
Starliner development and six routine missions after the
spacecraft's certification.
Launch schedule changes and engineering fixes resulting from
Starliner's March test mission cost Boeing $93 million, the
company said in July, bringing Boeing's total Starliner-related
charges to $688 million since the spacecraft's 2019 test
failures.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Bill
Berkrot)
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