NASA and Boeing are now aiming to fly the uncrewed Starliner-1 mission no later than April 2026, the space agency said. Launching by next April will require completing rigorous testing, certification and mission preparation activities, NASA said in a statement.
“NASA and Boeing are rigorously testing the Starliner propulsion system in preparation for two potential flights next year,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said in a statement.
reducing crew missions
NASA also said it has reached an agreement with Boeing to modify the Commercial Crew contract signed in 2014, which called for six crewed flights to the space station after certification of the spacecraft. The plan now is to fly Starliner-1 carrying cargo, and then fly three additional missions before the space station is retired.
“This modification allows NASA and Boeing to focus on safely certifying the system in 2026, executing Starliner’s first crew rotation when ready, and aligning our ongoing flight planning for future Starliner missions based on the station’s operational requirements through 2030,” Stich said.
SpaceX and Boeing were both awarded contracts in 2014 to develop crewed spacecraft and fly six operational missions to the space station. SpaceX conducted a successful crewed test flight with its Crew Dragon vehicle in mid-2020 and had its first operational mission before the end of that year. Most recently, the Crew-11 mission was launched in August, with Crew-12 currently scheduled for February 15.
Dragon has served as a reliable transportation system for NASA as Boeing has faced development struggles.
Starliner’s first flight without a crew in December 2019 was cut short due to software problems in the vehicle. It was lost almost immediately after launch as well as before atmospheric re-entry. It did not make any planned rendezvous with the space station.
The second mission, Orbital Flight Test 2, is scheduled for May 2022. Due to problems in the previous mission, this spacecraft also flew without a crew. This flight was more successful in reaching the space station despite some thruster problems.
Orbital flight test 3?
NASA spent more than two years testing Starliner on the ground ahead of its first crewed flight in 2024, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. While approaching the space station, the Starliner spacecraft once again encountered serious thruster problems. (However, the life-and-death nature of this flight was not revealed until nearly a year later.) Starliner eventually reached the station, but after heated discussions, NASA informed Boeing that the vehicle would return to Earth without a crew.
As a result, a Dragon mission was launched later in 2024 with only two astronauts instead of the total of four astronauts. This made possible the safe return of Wilmore and Williams in March 2025.
Since then, it has appeared likely that Boeing will need to fly an unmanned mission to demonstrate the safety of the Starliner’s propulsion system, but this was not confirmed until Monday.
NASA has remained largely silent about the changes made to Boeing’s propulsion system and the tests conducted on the ground. Part of the problem in diagnosing thruster problems is that the problems originated in the “service module” part of the spacecraft, which shuts down before the vehicle re-enters Earth’s atmosphere and returns to Earth.
This story was originally published on Ars Technica.
<a href