NASA and Boeing delay Starliner capsule’s 1st astronaut launch to early May

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The long-delayed first crewed mission of Boeing’s new Starliner capsule has been pushed again once more.

That mission to the International Space Station (ISS), referred to as Crew Flight Check (CFT), had been tentatively scheduled to launch in mid-April. However that is not the plan, NASA and Boeing introduced on Friday (March 8).

CFT is “at the moment scheduled to launch [in] early Might resulting from area station scheduling,” company officers wrote in an update on Friday afternoon.

Associated: Boeing’s 1st Starliner flight with astronauts delayed to April 2024

CFT will raise off atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station. It can ship Starliner, and NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, to the ISS for a roughly 10-day keep.

The take a look at flight had been scheduled to launch final July. Nevertheless, technical issues —mainly, an issue with the suspension traces on Starliner’s major parachutes and the truth that a lot of the capsule’s wiring was wrapped with flammable tape — pushed the liftoff to this spring.

These issues are below management, NASA mentioned in an replace in late January, which confused that CFT was still on track for a mid-April launch. However ISS site visitors points can alter schedules as effectively, as Friday’s information attests.

Boeing has been growing Starliner below a multibillion-dollar contract the corporate signed with NASA in September 2014. The capsule has launched on two uncrewed take a look at flights up to now, each of which focused the ISS.

Starliner suffered a number of issues on the primary mission, which flew in December 2019, and failed to satisfy up with the orbiting lab as deliberate. The capsule succeeded on its second strive, which lifted off in May 2022.

NASA additionally awarded SpaceX a business crew contract in September 2014. Elon Musk’s firm has now launched eight operational astronaut missions to the ISS for NASA, the newest of which, referred to as Crew-8, lifted off on Sunday (March 3).