Photo: Boeing
Big day today for the Boeing Starliner, or should we say for all fans of space exploration efforts: the American space agency and the company that makes the spacecraft are scheduled to give the world an update on the fate of the failed mission from not long ago.
According to NASA, the agency is still continuing “discussions on the status of the Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) mission” with Boeing, and plans on holding a press conference to let us all know about the results of the talks on Friday, August 13, at 1 p.m. EDT - live stream here.
There is no info yet on what we’ll be told, but chances are NASA will give a new deadline for the launch, and possibly some more details on what went wrong during the botched launch attempt at the beginning of the month.
The Starliner was supposed to be the second spacecraft in the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, joining SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. The first mission of the capsule took place in 2019, when it launched flawlessly, only to fail the most important part of the mission, docking with the International Space Station (ISS).
Boeing spent more than a year trying to fix the problem that caused the ship to fail meeting the ISS in orbit. It's unclear if the fix is effective, as the Starliner didn’t get a chance to prove it the second time around, because this time it didn’t even leave the pad.
Just like the Crew Dragon before it, when it finally takes off with no crew on board (and it will probably, eventually, do) on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, the Starliner will head to the ISS and dock with it. It should spend some time up there, and then head back down, proving the “system is ready to fly with crew aboard” and giving America two spaceships to use at the same time, something that hasn’t happened since the space shuttle program.
There is no info yet on what we’ll be told, but chances are NASA will give a new deadline for the launch, and possibly some more details on what went wrong during the botched launch attempt at the beginning of the month.
The Starliner was supposed to be the second spacecraft in the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, joining SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. The first mission of the capsule took place in 2019, when it launched flawlessly, only to fail the most important part of the mission, docking with the International Space Station (ISS).
Boeing spent more than a year trying to fix the problem that caused the ship to fail meeting the ISS in orbit. It's unclear if the fix is effective, as the Starliner didn’t get a chance to prove it the second time around, because this time it didn’t even leave the pad.
Just like the Crew Dragon before it, when it finally takes off with no crew on board (and it will probably, eventually, do) on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, the Starliner will head to the ISS and dock with it. It should spend some time up there, and then head back down, proving the “system is ready to fly with crew aboard” and giving America two spaceships to use at the same time, something that hasn’t happened since the space shuttle program.
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