CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Boeing’s spaceflight program may reach a significant milestone Monday night with the launch of its Starliner spacecraft, which will finally carry two NASA astronauts into orbit.
The mission, called Crew Flight Test, could take off Monday at 10:34 p.m. ET from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Live coverage of the event will be broadcast on nasa channels starting at 6:30 p.m. ET on Monday, according to the space agency.
The occasion has been a decade in the making: the culmination of Boeing’s efforts to develop a spacecraft worthy of transporting astronauts to and from the International Space Station under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
Development delays, test flight problems and other costly setbacks have slowed Starliner’s path to the launch pad. Meanwhile, Boeing’s rival in NASA’s commercial crew program, SpaceX, has become the preferred transportation provider for the space agency’s astronauts.
Now, NASA and Boeing have finally deemed the Starliner spacecraft ready for its ultimate test: allowing astronauts to test the vehicle in outer space.
Veteran NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will be aboard Monday’s mission, traveling by Starliner to the International Space Station for a weeklong stay.
A trouble-free flight could be a winning moment for Boeing’s spaceflight program and for the company overall, which has been in the hot seat due to problems with its commercial aircraft division.
Here’s what you need to know about Starliner’s journey ahead of its historic crewed test flight.
Boeing officials have tried to make clear that Starliner operates separately from the company’s commercial aircraft sector. And the Starliner team’s primary interest is ensuring a smooth test mission and crew safety, according to Mark Nappi, vice president and director of Boeing’s Starliner program.
The two Starliner astronauts have waited years for the spacecraft to be deemed ready to carry crew. After several astronauts came and went on assignments on the Starliner crew flight test, Wilmore received his appointment in 2020. NASA moved Williams to this flight in 2022 after initially assigning her in 2018 to a later Starliner mission.
“We’ve had a couple of launch dates and we’ve said, ‘Okay, we’re ready to go,'” Williams said in a meeting Wednesday. Press conference. “But now it’s like, hell, five days. It’s actually finally real, and I have to pinch myself a little bit to understand that we’re actually going.”
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At a news conference last month, Steve Stich, director of NASA’s commercial crew program, said that NASA required Boeing and SpaceX to meet a certain threshold regarding the risk of the mission resulting in astronaut deaths: 1 between 270.
“Boeing beats that figure with a crew loss of 1 in 295,” he said.
Boeing received a NASA contract to build Starliner in 2014, at the same time the space agency selected SpaceX to build its Crew Dragon capsule.
NASA awarded the companies deals worth a combined $6.8 billion, hoping that Boeing and SpaceX would have their capsules ready to fly as early as 2017.
That expectation was not met.
Taking longer than planned, SpaceX performed the inaugural astronaut launch of its Crew Dragon capsule in the summer of 2020. Since then, it has completed 13 missions in orbit for NASA astronauts and paying customers.
But Boeing, even though NASA officials initially believed the Starliner would be ready before SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, faced years of delays, setbacks and additional expenses that have cost the company more than $1 billion. according to public financial records.
In particular, the first Starliner test mission, conducted without a crew in late 2019, was plagued with errors. The vehicle failed in orbit, a symptom of software problems that included a coding error that knocked out an internal clock at 11 hours.
A second uncrewed flight test in 2022 uncovered additional software issues and problems with some of the vehicle’s thrusters.
Those problems delayed the inaugural crewed flight until 2023. But then a new set of problems arose: The spacecraft’s parachutes had some components that were weaker than expected, and duct tape on the vehicle was found to be flammable.
Finally, after a decade of development, NASA and Boeing have cleared the vehicle to transport astronauts.
Williams and Wilmore have taken a measured approach in answering questions about Starliner spacecraft development problems.
“I understand when you say ‘setback,'” Wilmore said during the recent press conference. “But honestly, with all the discovery (that’s what we would call it) that we’ve had, they have been steps forward.
“It hasn’t been a setback, it’s been moving forward,” he said. “And our families have experienced it with us.”
Williams added that she is prepared to embark on Monday’s mission with the expectation that small problems may arise.
“We always find things and we will continually find them,” he said Wednesday. “Not everything is going to be absolutely perfect while we’re flying the spacecraft. And that’s really our goal. We got to a point – all of us, great team – we got to a point where we felt very confident and comfortable with how this thing flies. spacecraft, and we have backup procedures in case we need them.”
“We’re here,” Williams said, “because we’re ready.”
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