The repeatedly postponed first manned flight of the new Boeing Starliner has been postponed again. The mission to the ISS, called Crew Flight Test (CFT), was previously planned for mid-April, but now, NASA and Boeing said yesterday, it will launch later.
The CFT is “currently scheduled to launch (in) early May due to space station scheduling.” The mission will launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station – the Starliner carrying astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will travel to the ISS for approximately ten days.
The test flight was supposed to take place in July last year, but it was hampered by technical problems: insufficient strength of the lines and fastenings of the Starliner parachutes and highly flammable tape, which was wrapped around much of the wires in the capsule. At the end of January, NASA announced that the problems had been resolved, and the launch was planned for mid-April. But the next obstacle now is the ISS schedule.
Boeing is developing Starliner under a contract with NASA signed in September 2014. The CFT was preceded by two uncrewed test flights. In December 2019, the ship was unable to dock with the ISS, but this was done on the second attempt in May 2022. In September 2014, NASA also awarded a contract to SpaceX for commercial crewed missions. Elon Musk's company has already launched eight NASA missions to the ISS – the latest, Crew-8, launched last Monday.
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