At the end of 2022, American astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada will fly to the International Space Station (ISS) not on the Boeing Starliner spacecraft, but on SpaceX Crew Dragon, Spaceflight Now reports .
The American edition notes that this circumstance indicates that the Starliner is not ready for the first flight with the crew Crew Flight Test (CFT) in 2022, which will most likely be postponed by NASA to 2023. Spaceflight Now reminds that before this, unmanned tests of the Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) of this spacecraft should take place.
The publication writes that in the second half of 2022, together with Mann and Kassada, an astronaut can fly to the ISS on Crew Dragon as part of the SpaceX Crew-5 mission, whose place on the Russian sOyuz MS spacecraft will be taken by an astronaut.
In September, the publication SpaceNews, referring to the statement of Katie Leaders, who recently headed the NASA Space Operations Directorate, reported that the OFT-2 mission, involving the second test attempt of the Starliner spacecraft without a crew to reach the ISS, is unlikely to take place this year.
Ivan Potapov
