The company’s uncrewed spacecraft will fly to the International Space Station, and if successful, will give NASA astronauts another way to get to orbit.
Boeing’s new launch, called the Orbital Flight Test-2 , isn’t its first attempt at an uncrewed demonstration of Starliner. The OFT-1 mission in December 2019 literally fell short, when software glitches caused the capsule to burn through propellant after launch. It went into orbit about 155 miles off the ground, but it never reached the ISS, which orbits much higher up.
If all goes well with this week’s test mission, Boeing’s first crewed flight, carrying two or three NASA astronauts, could take off later this year. “We want to make sure this is a vehicle we can fly on the next time,” said Kathryn Lueders, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, at the agency’s media briefing on Wednesday. “We need to make sure there isn’t anything we need to update or fix on this spacecraft.
That will include checking that Rosie the dummy astronaut made it back in one piece and conducting other tests to make sure real people can fly aboard the spacecraft. “Rosie doesn’t breathe, but we want the spacecraft to get back so we can start testing the environmental control system,” NASA astronaut Suni Williams said at the same event on Wednesday.
From NASA’s perspective, having contracts with Boeing as well as SpaceX offers advantages, including reducing reliance on, one of the operators of the ISS and the provider of Soyuz flights. “Redundancy is a high priority, especially with what’s going on with Russia and all the uncertainties in geopolitics. The more options we have of getting to space, with or without the crew, the better.
SpaceX’s reusable space capsules and rockets have saved NASA money, and combined with Boeing, the commercial crew program could save the agency