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Boeing’s Starliner Astronaut Taxi isn’t taking off this year after all.
Starliner was originally scheduled to launch on August 3 on Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2), an unmanned critical test mission to the International space station for NASA. But pre-launch testing revealed 13 blocked valves in the Starliner service module, postponing take-off – until next year it now appears.
“OFT-2’s potential launch windows continue to be evaluated by NASA, Boeing, United Launch Alliance and Eastern Range,” NASA officials said. wrote in a Friday update (October 8). “The team is currently working on opportunities in the first half of 2022 while awaiting the preparation of the material, the rocket manifesto and the availability of the space station.”
In picture : Boeing’s Starliner OFT-2 mission in pictures
United Launch Alliance is building Starliner’s rocket, the mighty Atlas V. The Eastern Range is the US Space Force entity that oversees east coast launches. (OFT-2 will take off from the Cape Canaveral space station in Florida.)
Boeing has made considerable progress on the valve issue to date, NASA officials said.
“Boeing has identified a most likely cause related to the oxidant-moisture interactions, and although some verification work is in progress, our confidence is high enough that we begin corrective and preventive actions,” wrote from NASA officials in Friday’s update. “Additional tests of spacecraft and components will be carried out in the coming weeks to further explore the contributing factors and necessary remediation of the system before flight.”
In 2014, NASA’s Commercial Crew program selected Boeing and SpaceX to provide transportation for astronauts to and from the space station, awarding the two companies multi-billion dollar contracts. SpaceX has already launched two operational missions in the orbiting laboratory with its Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule and is preparing for a third take-off on October 30. The company also launched a crewed test flight to the station called Demo-2 in May 2020.
Starliner has not yet transported astronauts, however, and cannot do so until it has successfully completed an unmanned test flight to the space station.
As its name suggests, OFT-2 will be Boeing’s second crack at this crucial mission. On the first test, launched in December 2019, Starliner suffered several problems, got stuck in the wrong orbit for an encounter with the station and landed after circling the Earth solo for three days.
Mike Wall is the author of “The low“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about finding alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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