A month and a half ago, Naked Science wrote that if the preparation of the CST-100 Starliner mission scheduled for April is delayed even a little, the launch will be postponed for several months at once. And so it turned out. In the first half of March, the most important stage was to take place, after which the pre—launch countdown actually begins - refueling the service module with fuel. Until recently, Boeing did not report whether this was done or not, and when the delay became obvious, it explained it with bureaucracy. Moreover, partially shifting the blame to NASA.
In February, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Boeing made a joint statement that the CST-100 Starliner is almost ready for flight. At the same time, describing this long-awaited news, Naked Science told about the tight schedule of docking with the ISS and why the Starliner cannot spend more than 60 days in a refueled state. In short: the identified problems of the fuel system are to blame for everything. Consequently, the critical point of pre-launch preparation will be this very refueling, which was scheduled to take place in early March.
Spring has come, but neither Boeing nor NASA have published any news about this procedure. And those who closely followed the progress of the project began to suspect something was wrong. At several press conferences, representatives of the agency were asked questions related to Starliner, but the answers were vague: preparations are underway, Boeing does not talk about any problems, everyone is very busy and working hard.
NASA announced on March 24 that the Starliner will not fly anywhere in April. No details, just a short phrase that the schedule of manned launches to the International Space Station has changed. Now CST-100 will go to the ISS after the private mission Axiom Space Ax-2. It is scheduled for the first half of May and will occupy the second available docking port for 16 days. After that, the arrival of the SpaceX Dragon "truck" is planned, which will stay at the station for about a month.
Simply put, the "move" of the launch to July became obvious, the reasons and at least an approximate new start date remained a mystery. According to SpaceNews, the answer has finally appeared. The culprits were appointed bureaucrats on both sides of the barrier — in Boeing and NASA at the same time. The first ones took too long to provide reports for the certification of the ship, and the second ones took too long to process them because of the increased workload.
Problematic documents are related to parachutes. As the speaker from Boeing assured the press, there were no technical shortcomings, but one of the elements of this most important Starliner system requires particularly close validation. The parachutes have been successfully tested and are now installed on the ship, but one of them — responsible for resetting the fairing of the entire system — needs to be subjected to another ground test. For the sake of flight safety in all modes, engineers need to make sure that it will work correctly during the operation of the emergency rescue system (under maximum load).
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| The launch of the Atlas V rocket with the Boeing CST-100 Starliner in May 2022 (the second unmanned test flight). Interestingly, for Atlas, the Boe-CFT mission will be one of the last launches, the carrier goes down in history. But at the same time — the first manned launch of this rocket [. |
| Source: Reuters, Steve Nesius |
The deadlines announced in February for the completion of the pre-launch preparation of the CST-100 were recognized as "a little optimistic". In the meantime, there are more than three months left until July, Boeing is going to double-check the avionics of the ship once again. In addition, a representative of the company said that an uncritical error was detected in one of the on-board computers responsible for the propulsion system, and it is desirable to diagnose all related systems again.
As for the new launch date of the Boe-CFT — this is the official name of the first manned Starliner mission — there is still no clarity. At the press conference, the dates were announced as "no earlier than July 21." But at about the same time, the USSF-51 mission is planned on the same Atlas V rocket, that is, the launch pad will be occupied. Now Starliner conflicts not only with the schedule of docking on the ISS, but also with the launch schedule. It is not yet known which day NASA and Boeing will eventually choose.
In fairness, it should be noted that the NASA division responsible for flights to the ISS is objectively sewn up. Both 2022 and 2023 proved to be incredibly intense for the orbiting laboratory. On top of the increased frequency of missions, problems with the Russian "Union" are superimposed, requiring the attention of all international cooperation. And the Starliner test flight becomes the cherry on the cake, literally overloading the bureaucracy. Which is inevitable, since flight safety is paramount for NASA, which means that every little thing must be documented and certified. In order to avoid.
