UNITED STATES: NASA announced on Thursday (Oct. 12) that the highly anticipated first crewed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has been postponed by an additional month, with the earliest launch now scheduled for mid-April 2024.
The decision to reschedule was made without providing a specific reason for the delay. Additionally, the target date for Starliner’s inaugural operational flight has been shifted from early 2024 to early 2025, according to agency officials.
Initial projections had been set for early March 2024 for Starliner’s maiden astronaut mission, known as the Crew Flight Test (CFT). However, this date was purely an anticipated readiness estimate and not an official launch target.
CFT will feature NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on a crucial test voyage to and from the International Space Station (ISS). The mission has experienced multiple setbacks due to various technical challenges, resulting in repeated launch date adjustments.
Originally slated for a July launch, CFT was postponed after the discovery of issues with Starliner’s wiring and parachute system. In September 2014, NASA awarded Boeing and SpaceX multi-billion-dollar contracts to provide astronaut transportation to and from the ISS. While SpaceX has completed seven operational flights to the ISS, Starliner has undertaken only two missions, both without a crew aboard.
The initial Starliner mission, known as the Orbital Flight Test (OFT), encountered significant difficulties shortly after its December 2019 launch, preventing it from reaching the ISS as planned. The subsequent OFT-2 mission in May 2022 completed the journey to and from the ISS.
A mid-February 2024 launch date has been confirmed for SpaceX’s Crew-8 mission, with the crew roster already announced. The members include NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick (commander), Michael Barratt (pilot), Jeanette Epps (mission specialist), and cosmonaut and mission specialist Alexander Grebenkin.
Following this, SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission is set for August 2024, shortly before Crew-8’s return to Earth. An additional “crew rotation mission” is anticipated for early 2025, which could be either SpaceX’s Crew-10 or Boeing’s Starliner-1, marking Boeing’s inaugural operational crewed flight to the ISS.
The originally projected summer 2024 launch date for Starliner-1 has now been postponed to allow time for the review of CFT results, encompassing “incorporation of anticipated learning, approvals of final certification products, and completion of readiness and certification reviews ahead of that [Starliner-1] mission,” NASA officials stated.
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