Boeing moves up Starliner test launch to ISS

Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel
·2 min read

The redo of the uncrewed test launch of the Boeing CST-100 Starliner to the International Space Station is now targeting a March 25 liftoff from Cape Canaveral.

The new date is a push of four days ahead of what was previously announced, but still part of a much longer delay because of issues with the first attempt of an orbital test flight to the ISS.

Dubbed Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2), the new target date was determined after Boeing announced an opening on the launch docket as well as progress being made on the spacecraft’s hardware and software.

Boeing just delayed the planned STP-3 mission for the Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center to allow more evaluation of the STP Satellite-6 spacecraft.

So now Boeing has an Atlas V rocket lined up to liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex-41 and a window of availability for the Starliner to actually dock at the increasingly busy ISS.

The mission is the company’s second attempt to demonstrate the spacecraft’s ability to dock with the ISS, allowing it to move forward with a crewed test flight later in 2021, and eventually join SpaceX with the duty of ferrying astronauts to and from the station.

The first OFT mission launched and landed safely in December 2019, but never made it to the space station. A review of the problems with that flight forced NASA and Boeing to take a hard look at software, hardware and workflow.

SpaceX has already flown both its test missions and begun the first of six contracted crew rotation flights on its Crew Dragon, which last launched in December. Rotations on the space station last about six months.

Boeing in the meantime had to address 80 problems found by a NASA-Boeing Independent Review Team with its 2019 test flight, which NASA designated a “high visibility close call.”

Now, Orbital Flight Test 2, which Boeing is doing at no cost to NASA, is ready to get the process of certification rolling again.

If successful, the flight will be followed by the Crewed Flight Test with NASA astronauts Nicole Mann, Mike Fincke and Barry Wilmore flying no earlier than June and then the first operational flight to the ISS, Starliner-1, with astronauts Sunita Williams, Josh Cassada, Jeanette Epps plus a fourth passenger yet to be announced flying no earlier than December 2021.