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LONG BEACH, Calif .– NASA and Boeing target the first half of 2022 to launch the rescheduled test flight of the CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle as engineers continue to investigate a valve issue that delayed the mission two months ago.
In an Oct. 8 statement, NASA said engineers were successful in freeing all but one of the stuck thruster valves in the Starliner spacecraft. These stuck valves forced the postponement of Boeing’s unmanned orbital flight test (OFT) 2 mission in early August. The only remaining valve still stuck closed is deliberately kept in this state “to preserve forensics for direct root cause analysis.”
The analysis has not yet determined the root cause of the blocked valves, but NASA said Boeing believed the most likely cause was the interaction between moisture and the nitrogen tetroxide propellant, a proposed cause. by Boeing officials in August. The source of the moisture was not included in the statement, which added that “although some verification work is in progress, our confidence is high enough that we begin corrective and preventive actions.”
As part of those efforts, Boeing technicians partially dismantled three valves last month and will remove three more in the coming weeks for inspection. These efforts will determine how Boeing will prepare the spacecraft for a new launch attempt, with options ranging from “minor refurbishment” of Starliner service module components to full service module replacement.
NASA confirmed in the statement that the next attempt to launch OFT-2 will not take place this year. “The team is currently working on opportunities during the first half of 2022 pending the preparation of the material, the rocket manifesto and the availability of the space station,” the agency said.
It was already clear that OFT-2 would likely not fly this year due to both the ongoing investigation and the other missions at the station. “The schedule and manifesto until the end of the year is pretty tight right now,” Kathy Lueders, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, said in a briefing on September 21. “My hunch is that it would probably be more likely next year, but we’re still working on that timeline.”
Steve Stich, head of NASA’s commercial crew program, offered the same assessment during an October 6 briefing on the upcoming SpaceX Crew-3 commercial crew mission. “There really is no opportunity for OFT-2 to fly this year,” he said. “From the station’s point of view, it would be early next year when a window would open for OFT-2.”
Starliner would dock at one of two ports, one of which will be occupied by a Crew Dragon spacecraft. The other port will be occupied by a Dragon cargo vessel from early December, probably until early January. A Crew Dragon commercial spacecraft, piloting the Ax-1 mission for Axiom Space, is expected to launch on February 21 and spend a week docked at the station using that alternate port.
Stich said in the Oct. 6 briefing that it was too early to specify a launch date for the OFT-2, given uncertainties over the vehicle’s readiness. “We really need to find the root cause of the valve problem on the service module,” he said. “Once we do that, we’ll have a little more certainty on the way forward as to when OFT-2 is, and from there, where CFT is. CFT, or Crew Flight Test, will be a crewed test flight with up to three NASA astronauts on board following OFT-2.
The delays mean more than two years will pass between the original OFT mission in December 2019, which suffered several software and communication issues that truncated the flight, and OFT-2. SpaceX, meanwhile, has conducted the Demo-2 crewed test flight and the Crew-1 and Crew-2 operational missions from OFT. NASA’s next Crew Dragon mission, Crew-3, is slated to launch on October 30, with Crew-4 and Crew-5 slated for 2022.
During the briefing, NASA defended Boeing despite these prolonged delays. “We haven’t lost confidence in the Boeing team. The team is doing an incredible job tackling the root cause of the valve problem, ”said Stich. “I have every confidence that they will find out what the problem is and fix it and we will get back on the road very soon.”
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