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WASHINGTON – NASA approved plans on July 22 for Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft to launch in a second unmanned test flight that aims to demonstrate that the company has corrected the problems seen in the first.
Following the flight readiness review, NASA gave the green light for a Starliner launch on July 30 as part of the Orbital Flight Test (OFT) 2 mission. space on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 is scheduled for 2:53 p.m. EST that day. If the launch is postponed, the next opportunity is August 3 due to scope conflicts and orbital mechanics.
A July 30 launch would set up an attempt to dock the Starliner with the International Space Station approximately 24 hours later. Starliner would remain docked at the station until August 5, undocking and landing later that day at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico.
The OFT-2 mission will come more than a year and a half after the original flight of the OFT in December 2019. Software problems encountered immediately after the spacecraft separated from its upper Centaur stage prevented it from making it to the ‘ISS, and instead landed after just two days in space.
The flight readiness review confirmed that Boeing implemented 61 recommendations from an independent review team last year on software issues during the OFT mission as well as 19 recommendations to resolve the issues. communication encountered during the flight. “These have been closed,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s sales team program manager, on a call with reporters after the review.
Among the changes to the readiness of the OFT-2 was a full rehearsal of the flight’s mission in a high-fidelity simulator. “We really had an integrated mission rehearsal, an end-to-end simulated mission,” said John Vollmer, vice president and program director of the commercial crew program at Boeing. “We learned a lot from it. “
The mission plan for OFT-2 will be very similar to what was planned for the OFT, Vollmer said. One change is that the spacecraft will maneuver shortly after separation from the Centaurs to better orient its antennas for communications during this critical first phase of the mission.
Launch plans are not expected to be affected by issues with Nauka, a new Russian module for the ISS launched on July 21. This module would have had problems with its propulsion system, although Roscosmos reported on July 22 that the module performed two maneuvers to raise its orbit. . Nauka is due to dock at the station on July 29.
“We worked with Roscosmos to put this choreography together,” said Joel Montalbano, NASA’s ISS program manager. Without going into the details of the issues with Nauka, also known as the Multipurpose Lab Module (MLM), he said that “we can support OFT docking with or without the MLM.”
A successful OFT-2 mission would allow NASA and Boeing to conduct the Crew Flight Test (CFT), the first crewed Starliner mission that will carry three NASA astronauts. Stich said the CFT mission could take place “as early as later this year” but declined to suggest a more specific date. Some industry sources are skeptical that CFT will launch this year, even though OFT-2 is launched on schedule and is successful.
“The most important thing, and the thing that Boeing and the NASA team focused on in the short term, is performing the orbital flight test. That has been our main focus,” he said. It is only after OFT-2 has been completed and the data analyzed that NASA will feel comfortable setting a date for a crewed mission. “It appears that, for now, to the end of the year here would be bearable, but again we have to focus on the orbital flight test first and get that flight successful. “
One factor that could speed up the CFT schedule is that the OFT-2 flying Starliner is closer to the crewed flight configuration than that used on the previous flight. This includes installing the launch interrupt thrusters that would allow Starliner to escape the rocket in an emergency.
NASA is eager to get Starliner up and running, providing redundancy to bring its astronauts to and from the ISS, a burden currently carried by SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. “It’s very important for the commercial crew program to have two space transportation systems,” Stich said.
The flight is also essential for Boeing, Vollmer admitted. “It is extremely important to us that we succeed in this flight. With everything that we have done in the last 18 months, we are very confident that we are going to have a good flight, ”he said.
He added, however, that he expected there to be “a learning curve” from OFT-2. “It’s a test flight,” he said. “It is of paramount importance that we have a successful flight.”
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