NASA delayed Boeing Crewed Flight Test all the way back to July

It looked like Boeing would have a fantastic April with the launch of its first crewed flight of the Starliner spacecraft. However, now it seems like we’re going to have to wait until July before we see this milestone launch from the company to the International Space Station.

NASA’s Associate Administrator of Space Operations Kathy Lueders, who’s retiring at the end of April, announced last week that Boeing Starliner’s CFT mission would be delayed. Still, we had to wait until this week to learn when. In a press conference with the media, NASA and Boeing shared Starliner CFT will now occur no earlier than July 21.

NASA and Boeing’s reason for the delay is due to more time needed to go over data and retest specific systems before the launch. However, it sounded to many of us in February, the last update, that all timelines were pointing toward April’s launch date. Some of the data that NASA wants to look over includes an upgraded structure on the spacecraft and a parachute test during a specific point of an abort.

I don’t think anyone is surprised by more data reviews; eyes can only read so much daily, and Starliner had many issues during its first two uncrewed test flights. What shocked me, and I think many other reporters is Boeing wants to do a physical test for its parachute system before launch. This will take place in May and sounded like it will test a parachute deployed to remove a structure around the Starliner capsule that then deploys the main chutes. This test will be at the highest point of a potential abort would take place.

This sounds like something that should have been done years ago during parachute deployment, but I yield to the industry experts at Boeing.

This test and other items, paired with a busy ISS schedule, will mean that CFT will launch just before the crew rotation of SpaceX’s Crew-6 and Crew-7 missions (mid-August). So while DM-2 (SpaceX’s version of a crewed flight) was on station for over 60 days with four spacewalks, Boeing’s crewmembers will at most get a couple of weeks before Crew-7 will arrive and need its docking port.

Future of ISS crewed flights

This doesn’t look like it will affect the current number of flights from SpaceX. However, this likely means the earliest we’ll see an operational flight from Starliner until the second half of 2024. If that is the case, it will even out the remaining rotations of flights between SpaceX and Boeing until the ISS’s retirement in 2030.