NASA and Boeing Target New Launch Date for Next Starliner Flight Test
Boeing Mission Update
December 9, 2020
NASA and Boeing are targeting March 29 for the launch of Starliner’s second uncrewed flight test to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) is a critical developmental milestone on the company’s path toward flying crew missions for NASA.
During OFT-2, the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft will launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, dock to the International Space Station and return to land in the western United States about a week later as part of an end-to-end test to prove the system is ready to fly crew.
The OFT-2 Starliner spacecraft is nearing final assembly inside the company’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The vehicle’s reusable crew module has been powered up and final checkouts of the avionics, power and propulsion systems are nearing completion. The spacecraft’s parachutes, landing airbags, base heat shield, and its back shells are installed signifying the completion of the vehicle build phase. In the coming weeks, teams will load the crew module with cargo, including Rosie the Rocketeer, and weigh the vehicle before mating it to its service module, which is already complete.
In parallel, Boeing technicians continue to refurbish the crew module flown on Starliner’s first Orbital Flight Test while also building a brand-new service module for NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test (CFT), which is targeted for launch in summer 2021, following a successful OFT-2 mission.
NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore, Mike Fincke, and Nicole Mann continue to train for CFT, the inaugural crewed flight of the Starliner spacecraft. After the completion of both test flights, NASA astronauts Sunita Williams, Josh Cassada and Jeanette Epps will launch on the Starliner-1 mission, the first of six crew rotation missions NASA and Boeing will fly as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.
Formal qualification of Starliner’s flight software also is underway inside Boeing’s Avionics and Software Integration Lab in Houston. Teams are running both static and dynamic testing of the vehicle’s software to ensure it’s coded as designed and incorporates all mission requirements. Test teams then will perform an entire end-to-end mission scenario, from prelaunch to docking and undocking to landing, using a high-fidelity suite of hardware before flying the OFT-2 mission.
“NASA and Boeing are doing a tremendous amount of work on all aspects of their flight software running numerous cases through the Boeing high fidelity simulation environment that includes the Starliner avionics,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
Boeing has worked hand-in-hand with NASA to address all of the lessons learned from Starliner’s first flight. The company is more than 90% complete in closing out all the recommended actions developed by a joint NASA and Boeing Independent Review Team, even those that were not mandatory, ahead of Starliner’s second uncrewed flight test.
United Launch Alliance also is making progress with the OFT-2 Atlas V hardware at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and ready for processing for the upcoming OFT-2 launch. The Centaur upper stage for CFT is complete, and all hardware for the CFT mission is on track for an early 2021 delivery to the launch site. The hardware to support Starliner-1 is in progress.
“The progress we’re making ahead of Starliner’s next flight is laying the groundwork for safe and reliable transportation services for NASA and a variety of customers for many years to come,” said John Vollmer, Starliner’s vice president and program manager at Boeing. “With each vehicle closeout, line of code tested, and document delivered, we’re on a path to proving we have a robust, fully operational vehicle. It’s truly a team with effort with NASA and our industry partners.”
9 responses to “NASA and Boeing Target New Launch Date for Next Starliner Flight Test”
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What’s the over-under on them launching by March 29th? I’d bet on Starship to fly first if I hadn’t seen SN8’s spectacular landing today (and yes, I know the test was successful and not dependent on sticking the landing.)
Slips are the rule rather than the exception in spaceflight. I’d say it’s highly likely OFT-2 slips into April.
Then there is also ISS scheduling to consider, if they need to deconflict OFT-2 with other flights such as Cygnus, HTV, Cargo Dragon, Progress, Soyuz or Crew Dragon (although as ISS manager Joel Montalbano says, that’s a good problem to have).
I must be missing your point. Starship has already flown first with this test. But if you mean orbital, there should be no way for Starship to beat Starliner into operational service.
Mmmmm, I wouldn’t be so sure.
The March 29 date for OFT-2 is likely to slip at least a little more and perhaps more than a little. Even if OFT-2 flies in, say April, though, it’s still anything but certain that the crewed CFT test mission follows during calendar 2021. If OFT-2 turns up any significant fresh or remaining bugs, of course, CFT in 2021 goes right out the window. But even a good – or at least acceptable – OFT-2 and a before-year’s-end CFT still puts Starliner’s first operational mission into mid-2022 at the earliest.
Will SH-Starship be “operational” before that? It will almost certainly have achieved both orbit and return before that – quite possibly more than once. Will a LEO cargo version capable of deploying Starlinks in mass quantities be extant by then? Probably. So at least for a minimal value of “operational,” SH-Starship looks to have a decent chance at achieving that status at the same time as, or perhaps a bit before, Starliner does likewise.
In the case of both vehicles, there is a great deal that has to go right to make those approximate dates. If there prove to be punches needing to be rolled with along the way, I have to favor SpaceX in terms of comparative ability to promptly snap back from any intervening reverses.
Note I said there “should” be no way for Starship to beat Starliner into operational service. They are not comparable vehicles. One is a capsule flying on a fully developed and experienced rocket, while the other is an end to end launch system development.
SpaceX clearly moves much faster and recovers far better than Boeing/NASA at this point in time. But to develop and test to the point of operational service two large RLV stages including one that is recovered from orbit is a massively greater task than finishing the job on a capsule that should have already been operational. And did I mention that both of these stages are based on new techniques and record breaking sizes compared to a fairly conservative capsule? And that the capsule is much further down the development path at this time?
Should. Boeing is on the 1 with first and goal. Starship is receiving a kick off. Should.
I have no factual dispute with anything you say. It is certainly true that Boeing has enormously less on its plate anent getting Starliner into service than does SpaceX anent doing the same with SH-Starship. But SpaceX is SpaceX and Boeing is Boeing. So that still makes it a horse race.
Or, as you say, a football game. SpaceX is at mid-field with a freshly caught ball, but is also a peerless broken field runner. Boeing may be first and goal, but it is also in a wheelchair and dragging around a supplementary oxygen bottle.
Good luck Boeing, hope it goes well.
darn sure better be better LOL then last time
Yep, moving at the speed of Old Space.