Boeing's First Crewed Starliner Flight To Launch April 2024
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
NASA announced on Thursday that the first-ever crewed test flight of Boeing's much-delayed Starliner spacecraft will launch no earlier than mid-April, 2024.
The mission - dubbed Crew Flight Test (CFT) - will see test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni William travel to the International Space Station (ISS) and back to try out Boeing's reusable capsule. The Starliner will be launched on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and transport the astronauts on an eight-day trip.
In 2014 NASA's Commercial Crew Program contracted Boeing and SpaceX to build spacecraft for transport to and from the ISS. Both firms struggled with multiple setbacks that delayed their first crewed test flights for years.
SpaceX is up and running, having first launched astronauts into space in 2020, and is due to fly its eighth mission in February next year.
Starliner, however, is yet to fly - but is eating a billion-dollar hole in Boeing's accounts.
[...] Meanwhile, the mechanism that connects the parachute to the capsule - needed to slow the Starliner's speed so it can safely land on Earth - has had to be redesigned after it broke apart in tests. The issue has plagued Boeing for a while, and was one of the main reasons it had to push back its first-ever crewed flight back in June.
[...] "NASA will provide an updated status of CFT readiness as more information becomes available," the space agency confirmed in a statement.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.