NASA/Aubrey Gemignani
NASA and Boeing announced Wednesday that the first manned flight of the Starliner spacecraft will take place by July 21.
Steve Stitch, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, said the delay was due to the extra time required to complete Starliner’s pre-flight review process, as well as from other vehicles that visited the space station in June and early June. traffic. of July.
“If you look at all the different parts, most of the work will be completed in April,” Stich said on a conference call with reporters. “But there is one area that extends into the May timeframe, and this actually has to do with the certification process for the parachute system.”
Boeing has conducted more than 20 tests of parachute systems. This includes dropping the craft from different altitudes to test the deployment sequence and how the parachute works in different environments to simulate a return from space. Stitch said the Starliner’s already installed parachutes are fine. Mostly it is to check all the tests that Boeing has done to make sure the parachute works as intended.
“We just go through all the data and look at the data and make sure we are really ready to fly safely,” Stitch said.
He said there will be one final test to be completed on the ground of the parachute subsystem that pulls apart the Starliner’s forward heat shield and sets the deployment of the drogue and main parachute. increase.
The launch of the vehicle was postponed to June due to the additional time required to complete the review process of the Starliner and its parachute system. However, NASA plans to begin SpaceX’s CRS-28 cargo resupply mission at that point, detaining him in one of his hatches docking the lab. This supply mission is to bring a solar array to a station NASA doesn’t want delayed. As such, Starliner’s flight was postponed to the second half of July due to the lack of a docking port.
NASA and Boeing will also have to balance schedules with the United Launch Alliance, which is pushing orbital missions with the Atlas V rocket. The company currently has his USSF-51 mission in the Space Force scheduled for this summer, and his Vulcan rocket debut after May of this year will also include a Space Launch Complex-41 pad. Is required.
This will be the third flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. The rocket, which debuted in December 2019, failed to rendezvous with the International Space Station after multiple problems, including software issues. After fixing these issues, Boeing conducted her second test flight in May 2022. The flight had some propulsion issues, but the Starliner docked at the space station and was ready for manned flight testing.
After Boeing completed this significant test flight and proved NASA operational mission readiness, the company flew to the space station about once a year for regular crew rotations. increase. The first of these operational missions is scheduled for spring 2024.
