NASA announced late yesterday that the agency will conduct the long-awaited Readiness Review for Boeing’s Starliner Crewed Flight Test on Saturday, August 24th. In that Review, the readiness of Starliner to return to Earth with astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will be analyzed by NASA leadership and a decision as to how the Starliner CFT mission will be ended may finally be made.
Also in the announcement, NASA said that they will hold a press conference shortly after the Readiness Review ostensibly to announce and discuss their descision.
What Will Be Decided?
NASA’s choice seems to be a simple one on the surface: return the astronauts in the Starliner capsule or eventually return them on a SpaceX Crew Dragon while Starliner returns to Earth autonomously.
The date of the Readiness Review has been delayed while NASA analyzed data from Boeing, Aerojet Rocketdyne and its own scientists and engineers, saying at the time that they needed the extra time for a more thorough analysis and more testing.
Photo: NASA
Last week, NASA’s Ken Bowersox, Associate Administrator of the Space Operations Mission Directorate said that NASA has the luxury of time on its side in order to come to a consensus on whether to return Williams and Wilmore to Earth on Starliner or in a Crew Dragon. “A flight readiness review around the end of next week, potentially beginning of the following week,” he said.
“We can juggle things and make things work if we need to extend, but it’s getting a lot harder,” Bowersox said. With the consumables we’re using, with, the need for the use of the ports for cargo missions, we’re reaching a point where that last week in August, we really should be making a call, if not sooner.”
The Crew Flight Test launched on June 5 on a ULA (United Launch Alliance) Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Designed to be an end-to-end test of the Starliner system, the flight was originally announced to be an eight-day mission, but by the time of its review it will have reached 80 days.