Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft will launch on the International Space Station (ISS) for the second time in March 2021 if all goes as planned.
Boeing and NASA announced the pilot’s flight time for Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2) on December 9. During the first attempt in December 2019, the Starliner had a problem with the timer, out of orbit and had to return to Earth without being able to catch up with the ISS station as planned. The OFT-1 post-flight test revealed problems with the cabin software. But Starliner’s engineering team found a way to fix this, and now the flight software is officially standard before OFT-2 flight.
“NASA and Boeing have done a tremendous amount of flight software work, testing multiple scenarios using a highly reliable Boeing simulation environment,” said Steve Stich, Commercial Passenger Program Manager. NASA’s commercial crew program, said.
In September 2014, NASA signed a $ 4.2 billion contract with Boeing to complete Starliner development and perform at least six missions to transport humans between Earth and the ISS station. If the OFT-2 is successful, a pilot flight to the ISS will take place, probably in the summer of 2021. Then Starliner will obtain a commercial license.
In addition to Boeing, SpaceX also won a contract to transport astronauts worth $ 2.6 billion from NASA. The company successfully completed its first trade mission, the Crew-1, last month, bringing NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi to the ISS with the Crew Dragon. .
