No Vacancy: Starliner Delayed Again Due To ISS Scheduling

Starliner has been delayed again, this time because of ISS logistics. The mission, Crew Flight Test, planned for NET April 22, will now launch in early May. When it launches, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will be aboard.

The schedule change is not due to any technical or logistics reason on the part of Boeing and the Starliner team, but instead it appears to be a simple matter of scheduling: SpaceX will launch NASA’s CRS-30 resupply mission to sometime in mid-March, and once there, the Dragon will remain at ISS for about a month.

Following CRS-30’s departure, ISS managers plan to move Crew-8’s “Endeavour” capsule from its current docking port at the Harmony module to the Zenith port sometime after that to open a docking port for Starliner when it arrives.

Starliner’s flight is some fourteen years in the making. The CST-100 capsule was first unveiled in 2010, funded by NASA in 2011 and finally flying an uncrewed mission in 2019.

Orbital Flight Test 1

That mission, OFT-1, went awry quickly. Shortly after the launch, its autonomous flight-control system misfired due to an incorrect clock issue that had been overlooked in mission planning. Starliner could not dock with ISS, and the mission was abbreviated. After that, the capsule re-entered and made a safe landing at White Sands Space Harbor a few days later.

Orbital Flight Test 2

Boeing and NASA went back to the drawing board, determined OFT-1’s issues, made corrections and improvements and then planned to fly OFT-2, a mission Boeing paid for out of its own pocket, in August of 2021. That was not to be: thirteen propulsion system valves experienced problems from corrosion, and Starliner was returned to Boeing’s facility in Kennedy Space Center. OFT-2 finally flew in May of 2022 and completed its mission after landing in New Mexico.

After OFT-2, New Problems Create More Delays

Afterward, more issues: it was determined that the “soft links” used on the suspension lines of Starliner’s three main parachutes could not handle a load of Starliner if one failed, leading to a loss of the crew aboard the spacecraft. Additionally, testing determined that a type of tape called P-213 that was used to protect wiring harnesses inside the spacecraft could be flammable under certain conditions. That tape needed to be replaced before another flight. Boeing also experienced some valve problems on OFT-2 and did further work to resolve those issues in preparation for the Crewed Flight Test Mission.

Crewed Flight Test Being Readied

That work has been done. United Launch Alliance at SLC-41 is stacking Starliner’s Atlas-V and Starliner preparations. On February 25, Steve Stich, NASA Manager of the Commercial Crew Program, gave a Starliner update, saying that the issues that were discovered “[H]ave been resolved, and we’re in the middle of some final certification work on the parachutes and a few other things.”

This delay, one certainly not of its own making, will give Boeing some breathing space on their launch campaign timeline. Given the issues this program in particular, and Boeing in general, have been experiencing, that must be welcome news. They can triple-quadruple-check and recheck things on Starliner and hopefully have a successful mission in May.