Boeing says manned Starliner spacecraft will take off in March – 8/7/2023 – Science

The airline Boeing announced on Monday (7) that its Starliner spacecraft will be ready to perform its first manned flight in March 2024.

The program suffered several postponements and, finally, the transport of the astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS, its acronym in English) using the Starliner was scheduled for July 21st.

However, Boeing engineers detected new problems related to a faulty parachute system and a wire harness tape which, under certain conditions, would be flammable.

“Now, under current plans, we anticipate to be ready with the spacecraft in early March” of 2024, said Mark Nappi, Boeing vice president and director of the Starliner program.

Nappi added that the exact launch date depends on the space calendar and will be decided together with NASA and the United Launch Alliance, which will supply the Atlas 5 rocket to Starliner.

Steve Stich, director of NASA’s Commercial Crew program, defended the delays on safety grounds and reiterated the space agency’s commitment to Boeing despite criticism from observers.

“We’ll fly when we’re ready,” said Stich, who believes it’s important to have a Plan B shuttle service to the ISS.

NASA hopes to enable Starliner as yet another “taxi” for its astronauts to the space platform, a service that SpaceX, owned by tycoon Elon Musk, has provided the agency since the successful test mission of its Dragon capsule in 2020.

The American space agency awarded contracts of US$ 4.2 billion (about R$ 24.5 billion, at current prices) to Boeing and US$ 2.6 billion (R$ 12.7 billion) to SpaceX in 2014 , shortly after the end of the space shuttle program, at a time when the United States depended on Russian Soyuz rockets for trips to the orbital platform.