After years of delays and a dizzying array of setbacks during test flights, Boeingâs Starliner spacecraft is finally set to make its inaugural crewed launch.
The mission is on track to take off from Florida as soon as May 6, carrying NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the International Space Station, marking what could be a historic and long-awaited victory for the beleaguered Starliner program.
âDesign and development is hard â particularly with a human space vehicle,â said Mark Nappi, vice-president and Starliner program manager at Boeing, during a Thursday news briefing. âThereâs a number of things that were surprises along the way that we had to overcome. ⌠It certainly made the team very, very strong. Iâm very proud of how theyâve overcome every single issue that weâve encountered and gotten us to this point.â
Boeing and NASA officials made the decision Thursday to move forward with the launch attempt in less two weeks. However, Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASAâs Space Operations Mission Directorate, noted that May 6 is ânot a magical date.â
âWeâll launch when weâre ready,â he said.
If successful, the Starliner will join SpaceXâs Crew Dragon spacecraft in making routine trips to the space station, keeping the orbiting outpost fully staffed with astronauts from NASA and its partner space agencies.
Such a scenario â with both Crew Dragon and Starliner flying regularly â is one for which the U.S. space agency has long waited.
âThis is history in the making,â NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said of the upcoming Starliner mission during a March 22 news conference. âWeâre now in the golden era of space exploration.â
SpaceX and Boeing developed their respective vehicles under NASAâs Commercial Crew Program, a partnership with private industry contractors. From the outset, the space agency aimed to have both companies operating at once. The Crew Dragon and Starliner spacecraft would each serve as a backup to the other, giving astronauts the option to keep flying, even if technical issues or other setbacks grounded one spacecraft.
NASA did not initially envision, however, that SpaceXâs Crew Dragon would operate on its own for nearly four years before Boeingâs Starliner reached its first crewed test flight.
In the earliest days of the program, which awarded SpaceX and Boeing contracts in 2014, NASA had favored Boeing â a close partner dating back to the mid-20th century â over SpaceX, which the federal agency saw as a relatively young and capricious upstart.
Boeing, SpaceX and NASAâs vision
As recently as 2016, NASA was planning its schedule with the view that the Starliner would beat the Crew Dragon to the launchpad.
But the race between Boeing and SpaceX took a clear turn by 2020. Missteps riddled a Starliner test flight the prior year, leaving NASA and Boeing officials scrambling to figure out what went wrong. The Starliner did not dock with the space station on that mission due to software problems, including an issue with the spacecraftâs internal clock, which was off by 11 hours.
Meanwhile, SpaceX made history in May 2020 with the launch of its Demo-2 test flight, carrying astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on a two-month mission to the International Space Station.
SpaceXâs Crew Dragon has been flying routine trips ever since, carrying NASA astronauts and even paying customers and tourists. The spacecraft has now flown 13 crewed missions to orbit.
Boeing, however, has spent several years contending with a string of challenges, including a list of issues that were uncovered in 2022 during the spacecraftâs second uncrewed test flight. Boeingâs commercial airplane division also has faced a series of scandals â including the 737 Max crisis and the recent quality control issues highlighted after a door plug blew off during an Alaska Airlines flight in January â that have damaged the companyâs brand.
NASA officials at one point in 2020 even admitted that they had turned more scrutiny toward SpaceX and its unorthodox ways, while issues with Boeingâs Starliner slipped through the cracks.
âPerhaps we didnât have as many people embedded in that process as we should have,â Steve Stich, NASAâs Commercial Crew Program manager, said at a July 2020 news conference.
âWhen one provider (SpaceX) has a newer approach than another, itâs often natural for a human being to spend more time on that newer approach, and maybe we didnât quite take the time we needed with (Boeingâs) more traditional approach.â
Starlinerâs setbacks
Boeingâs space division operates separately from its commercial airline team, and officials at NASA and the U.S. aerospace giant have routinely sought to make that distinction.
NASA officials have also made clear they are working more closely with Boeing than ever, with personnel on the ground at Boeing facilities overseeing some of the fixes the company has put in place ahead of the upcoming Starliner flight.
âThis is an important capability for NASA. We signed up to go do this, and weâre gonna go do it and be successful at it,â Nappi said Thursday. âI donât think of it in terms of whatâs important for Boeing as much as I think of it as in terms of whatâs important for this program.â
Still, Boeing and NASA have had a long list of issues to address.
During the last flight test in 2022, for example, engineers found that the suspension lines on the Starlinerâs parachute had a lower threshold for failure than initially expected.
NASA and Boeing engineers tested a fix for that issue earlier this year, but parachutes will remain top of mind as they work through some last-minute checkouts before liftoff, Stich said Thursday.
Some tape that was also used to protect wiring harnesses was found to be flammable, and Boeing had to remove and replace about a mileâs worth of the material, according to Nappi.
Boeing may even need to implement a redesign of some of the spacecraftâs valves because of corrosion issues. That upgrade, however, is not expected to be in place until the second crewed flight, slated for 2025, at the earliest.
On Mayâs inaugural crewed flight, Boeing will instead use a âperfectly acceptable mitigationâ that should prevent the valves from sticking, Nappi said in March.
Starliner and safety
Despite the long path to the launchpad, the two people at the center of the Starlinerâs first crewed mission â Williams and Wilmore, two longtime NASA astronauts â said as they arrived at the launch site that they are as confident as ever.
âWe want the general public to think itâs easy, but itâs not â itâs way hard,â Wilmore said after arriving at Starlinerâs launch site in Florida on Thursday. âWe wouldnât be here if we werenât ready. We are ready. The spacecraftâs ready, and the teams are ready.â
Wilmore mentioned at a that he is not expecting the Starliner spacecraft to enter any âfailure modes.â
âBut if something were to occur â because weâre all humans, we canât build things perfectly â if something were to occur, we have several downgrade modes,â he said during the , referring to modes that give the astronauts the ability to take more manual control over the spacecraft if something doesnât go to plan.
Williams said during a March news event, âWe wouldnât be sitting here if we didnât feel â and tell our families that we feel â confident in this spacecraft and our capabilities to control it.â
She added during the Thursday news briefing in Florida, âI have all the confidence in not only our capabilities and the spacecraftâs capabilities, but also our mission control team, whoâs ready for the challenge."