Boeing will re-do bungled test flight of Starliner spacecraft, further delaying first astronaut mission
Boeing and NASA declined to comment on the matter beyond the statements they issued Monday.
Boeing launched Starliner into space for the first time in December, and problems arose almost immediately. A software issue caused the spacecraft to misfire. One of the primary goals of the mission, to prove Starliner can safely dock with the International Space Station, had to be abandoned. And the craft was forced to return from space days earlier than expected.
NASA and Boeing officials revealed several other major software and communications issues in the weeks after the botched December test flight.
NASA and Boeing officials had not ruled out the latter option when asked by reporters at several press briefings over the past few months.
Boeing said in its statement Monday that the test flight will come “at no cost to the taxpayer.”
NASA announced earlier this month that it would launch a full-scale safety review of Boeing’s work on Starliner, noting that there were “numerous instances where the Boeing software quality processes either should have or could have uncovered the defects.”
A separate review carried about by a team of NASA and Boeing experts sought to determine what went wrong during the first uncrewed test flight. It found that Boeing would need to carry out a thorough review of Starliner’s software, among other things.
NASA said in its statement that a “second uncrewed flight does not relieve Boeing from completing” those reviews.
The company has worked for the past decade to prepare Starliner for crewed missions, ever since NASA retired its space shuttle program and asked the private sector to design spacecraft capable of ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station.
The space agency allocated $4.2 billion to Boeing and $2.6 billion to SpaceX in 2014 for that task. NASA initially hoped Boeing’s and SpaceX’s new vehicles would be up and running by 2017. Meanwhile, the space agency has paid Russia to fly American astronauts to the space station aboard Soyuz spacecraft.
SpaceX, which developed a spacecraft called Crew Dragon, is also behind schedule. But the company already completed an uncrewed demo flight last year, and it is currently preparing to launch its first crewed mission this spring.
It’s not yet clear if the COVID-19 pandemic might affect that schedule. So far, the government has allowed rocket launches and work on Crew Dragon and Starliner to continue despite lockdown orders that have practically shuttered other industries.