Boeing Starliner has seen many setbacks throughout its growth. The organization puts back crucial goals by weeks and even months. Without the ship hitting the space station, the first uncrewed test flight stopped, and the corporation cited a clock glitch for its loss. Now, Boeing has reported yet another pause with NASA expecting the organization to tweak its uncrewed test project.
Boeing announced this week that the second Orbital Flight Test (OFT) effort originally planned for March 25 would have to be postponed until April 2. Although this could sound like a slight delay, it's only the latest indication of what seems to be Boeing's utter struggle to accomplish its targets and stay on track.
The spacecraft would carry a new group of American, European and Japanese astronauts to the station, enabling Crew-1 flight astronauts now on the station to return home by early May.
The mission of the OFT-2, which entails docking with the International Space Station, will begin what will be a busy month at the station. The Soyuz project is expected to launch on April 10 with three Russian cosmonauts on board the ISS. However, NASA announced on Feb. 9 that it is aiming to secure one of the three seats for an astronaut on the spaceship in return for "in-kind services" rather than paying it.
Why is it Rescheduled to April?
Florida Today reported that natural disasters, including winter storms in Texas and many power surges, impeded the test flight of the Boeing Starliner. The situation likewise affected the workflow of the Boeing facility at the Kennedy Space Center. After April 2, the organization is expected to plan and set up the spacecraft for the launch at any time.
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SpaceNews also reported that the company is still working on completing software tests on the spacecraft, solving one of the main problems in December 2019 for the first OFT flight. NASA said that about 95 percent of the suggestions found by an objective analysis of the project almost a year earlier, which centered largely on tech, were finalized by teams.
In the new spacecraft orbital test flight decisions, NASA and Boeing go hand-in-hand since it is a collaborative partnership and initiative between the two. In addition, the Starliner test flight is vital to the company's task of securely and efficiently flying astronauts to the International Space Station when the time arrives.
The Boeing CST-100 Starliner is now in a dangerous manufacturing region inside the Kennedy Space Center to be taken care of and filled with jet fuel in time for the soon-to-be flight. The company's command center is based in Houston, TX, where power outages are still out of reach and happening at the Johnson Space Center.
What's All About This OFT-2 Mission?
According to BGR, Boeing Starliner is launching the OFT-2 mission onboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V spacecraft. The flight will take place at Cape Canaveral, Florida, from Space Launch Complex-41. The Starliner would dock to continue its way back to the ISS, ultimately arriving over a week later in the western United States. In the end-to-end flight experiments, this would play an immense function, thereby showing that the device will host a flight team.
As a note, during a test on its new service module within the Starliner manufacturing plant, located inside the Kennedy Space Center, Boeing recently coupled its reusable crew vehicle. It claimed that teams worked very hard to complete the Starliner's interior before loading cargo and performing final spacecraft checkouts.
Although SpaceX could have taken a team of astronauts onboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station in the past year, NASA would soon rotate launches with Boeing. The Elon Musk-led business has been heading back and forth to the ISS for resupply runs. Still, NASA is planning to improve the situation this year.
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