TEMPO.CO, Washington - Boeing's first mission carrying astronauts to space aboard its Starliner capsule has been delayed until at least the summer, a NASA official said on Thursday, March 23, as people familiar with the matter said last-minute tests and technical debates nixed a plan for an April launch.
Previously planned for late April, the Starliner mission is now slated to launch after a private astronaut mission scheduled for May "as teams assess readiness and complete verification work" for the spacecraft, NASA's space operations chief Kathy Lueders said on Twitter. She did not provide further details about the reasons for the delay.
Starliner's debut crewed mission, which will carry commander Butch Wilmore and pilot Suni Williams, to the International Space Station will be a crucial moment for Boeing's space unit. It represents the spacecraft's final test flight before joining rival SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule as the second NASA-approved ride to orbit.
Steve Stich, head of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said in an interview with Reuters before the delay was announced that the certification process for the spacecraft had taken "a little longer than we expected" and was "a whole lotta work."
A successful 10-day test mission with Starliner docked to the space station, an orbital research lab some 250 miles high in Earth's orbit, would mark a crucial milestone. Boeing has struggled to compete with Elon Musk's SpaceX in the nascent market for private astronaut flights.
Finding a new launch date after April is complicated by heavy traffic at the space station over the next few months and a tight schedule for Starliner's launch provider, the Boeing-Lockheed (LMT.N) joint venture United Launch Alliance, Boeing, and NASA officials have said.
The delay comes as Boeing and NASA performed extra testing on several areas of the spacecraft.
Boeing software engineers are running tests with Starliner's manual flight system used as a backup in case the spacecraft's automated flight software fails, Stich said.
A Boeing spokesman said the focus for that testing is for "added redundancy in cases of emergency."
Deliberations about mission-critical lithium-ion batteries and the low chance they overheat while the spacecraft is docked at the station also took more time than expected, Stich said.
In a recent pre-flight technical meeting with Boeing and NASA officials, the space station's chief safety officer and representatives from NASA's astronaut office disagreed with Boeing's plans to proceed with the mission citing concerns over the batteries, according to a person who attended the meetings.
But those NASA officials eventually agreed with Boeing and others at the federal space agency that the chances of a battery mishap that would endanger the crew were low, said the person who requested anonymity to discuss preflight deliberations.
