NASA, Boeing delay crewed Starliner flight

The first astronauts to fly on Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner won’t climb on board for a planned trip to the International Space Station until at least April 2023.

The Crew Flight Test (CFT) schedule falls nearly 3 ½ years since the original uncrewed flight of Starliner that failed to rendezvous with the ISS. A retry of that uncrewed flight, that also faced delays, finally made the docking this past May, and there was optimism the follow-up flight with humans could come before the end of the year.

Those plans, though, had already been pushed into February and have now been delayed further, in part due to a busy schedule at the ISS, but also because NASA and Boeing need to sign off on fixes and mitigation plans of some issues seen during the May flight.

“We understand our customer must consider

the needs of the International Space Station in scheduling the certification flight of a second U.S. commercial crew transportation system,” said Mark Nappi, Boeing’s vice president and program manager for the Starliner program. “We are working to have the CFT vehicle ready to fly ahead of the new launch date.”

Boeing is playing catch-up to SpaceX as part of NASA’s Commercial

Crew Program with both Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft that were supposed to have been trading off duties to ferry astronauts to the ISS at a pace of two missions per year.

The move to commercial launches to the ISS was part of NASA’s need to stop relying on Russia to bring its crew to the space station following the end of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011.

SpaceX made its crewed test flight to the ISS in May 2020 and has since been making the flights every six months or so beginning in November 2020. SpaceX is currently on its fifth rotational mission, with Crew-6 slated for February next year and now Crew-7 for fall 2023.

So even if Boeing’s Starliner gets approved for use by NASA, its first rotational flight won’t come until early 2024. Boeing’s contract has six operational Starliner flights, all of which will fly atop United Launch Alliance Atlas V rockets from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. With Boeing’s delays, NASA has awarded more flight contracts for SpaceX to fill up the needs through the ISS’s planned use through 2030.

Boeing’s CFT flight is slated to bring NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the station. The first operational mission, Starliner-1, will bring four passengers, including NASA astronauts commander

Scott Tingle, pilot Mike Fincke, Jeanette Epps and one yet-to-be announced fourth crew member.

Wilmore, Williams and Fincke all recently took part in a Crew Validation Test for the vehicle. The CFT flight will be using a refurbished crew module coupled with a new service module, currently at Boeing’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility at Kennedy Space Center.

“Starliner’s two uncrewed orbital flight tests provided invaluable information about our spacecraft,” Nappi said. “Additional learnings are expected as Starliner transitions from a fully autonomous flight without crew to flights with crew. With the help of experienced NASA test pilots, Wilmore and Williams, we are closer to our goal of flying a safe and capable spacecraft.”

The Boeing CST-100 Starliner docked with the ISS in May, but a crewed flight won’t happen before April 2023.