Space Stations

First Crewed Flight Of Boeing Starliner Slips Again

By Keith Cowing
SpaceRef
March 29, 2023
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First Crewed Flight Of Boeing Starliner Slips Again
The Starliner team works to finalize the mate of the crew module and new service module for NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test that will take NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams to and from the International Space Station.

NASA announced today that it is once again delaying the launch of the Boeing Starliner CFT flight until 21 July 2023 – at the earliest.

Starliner has been plagued by delays due to prolonged development, then a deeply flawed first (un-crewed) test flight, followed by repairs and redesigns, then a second un-crewed flight, followed by more issues that needed attending to before NASA would give a green light to fly a crew.

According to NASA’s Steve Stich the main delay in launching Starliner has to do with certification work. There is also a lot of arrival and departure activity at the ISS which also helped push the launch to the right.

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