NASA has announced that it has pushed back the launch of its Orbital Flight – Test 2 until 2022, as it continues finding technical issues on the Boeing Starliner spacecraft. The technicians are struggling to fix an oxidiser isolation valve issue on the Boeing Starliner.
Read: TSMC and Sony could help ease global chip shortage
According to NASA’s announcement, “the team currently is working toward opportunities in the first half of 2022 pending hardware readiness, the rocket manifest and space station availability.” Steve Stitch, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, added that it was “a complex issue,” affecting parts of the spacecraft that aren’t easy to access, which has required “a methodical approach and sound engineering to effectively examine.”
NASA’s Commercial Crew Program was launched to take passengers to and from the International Space Station and it selected two vehicles to fulfil this need. The Boeing Starliner is far behind schedule, while the other – SpaceX’s Crew Dragon – has already taken passengers up to the ISS. In the procurement process NASA required potential spacecraft providers to launch an uncrewed test flight, followed by a crewed test flight before commencing operations. Starliner has only conducted one uncrewed flight, which was unsuccessful as it could not reach the ISS due to software issues.
Boeing had hoped to fly the Starliner without passengers over the summer in a second attempt at an uncrewed flight, but hours before liftoff the company found the problems with some of the spacecraft’s propulsion valves and NASA scrubbed the launch.
As a result of these delays NASA has said that two astronauts that were supposed to be sent to the ISS soon via Starliner have been reassigned to a SpaceX flight. Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada will fly on the fifth crewed SpaceX mission to the International Space Station, currently scheduled for 2022.
