The first manned flight of the Boeing space capsule, Starliner, will take place in February 2023, the company and NASA announced Thursday, which wants to establish a second means of transport to the International Space Station (ISS) for its astronauts. These have been traveling since 2020 aboard SpaceX ships to the ISS, but NASA wants to diversify its options.
After a series of mishaps that delayed Boeing’s program, including a failed flight in 2019, the company finally managed to reach the ISS for the first time last May, without a crew.
The company must now make a second flight, this time inhabited, for the spacecraft to gain approval from NASA and start regular missions, at a planned rate of one per year.
a test flight
“We’re targeting a liftoff date of February 2023,” Steve Stich, head of NASA’s commercial manned program, said during a press conference on Thursday.
This test flight, called CFT (for “crew flight test”), will carry two NASA astronauts, Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams. They will have to spend about eight days on the ISS, where they will participate in the research activities carried out in the flying laboratory, said Joel Montalbano, director of programs for the International Space Station.
“Our goal as an agency is to have two US commercial providers up and running as soon as possible,” he said. Boeing hoped until recently to be able to make this flight before the end of 2022.
But the snags during the idle test required adjustments to the vehicle. A particular problem had been detected in the propulsion system: two thrusters used by the capsule to get on the correct trajectory after takeoff had not worked.
Source: BFM TV
