The saga of Boeing’s delayed Starliner capsule continues: NASA has confirmed it pushed back the next SpaceX Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station to give Starliner teams more time to work out how to bring the spacecraft back to Earth.
The Starliner’s initial eight-day minimum mission is now a distant memory, and the repeated delays are impacting other launches to the ISS. According to NASA, the launch of Crew-9 has been postponed to No Earlier Than (NET) September 24, and the subsequent commercial resupply mission —SpaceX’s 31st — has moved back to mid-October.
Furthermore, the Crew-9 mission will have to launch from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, since the Launch Complex 39A pad at Kennedy Space Center needs to be prepared for September’s Falcon Heavy launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper mission.
Crew-8 is currently on the ISS and was supposed to return to Earth at the end of August. NASA prefers to do the crew handover on the space station itself, which would mean the return of that mission could also be delayed to accommodate the late launch. While not outside the realm of possibility, adding a month to Crew-8’s mission would eat into the margins of how long the Crew Dragon can remain docked to the ISS.
A nominal NASA commercial crew mission to the ISS has the Crew Dragon docked for no longer than 180 days. The Crew Dragon can match the Soyuz on-orbit stay constraint of 220 days [PDF], but extending the mission increases the risks involved.
The alternative would be to return Crew-8 before Crew-9 launches.
In its statement, NASA said, “This adjustment allows more time for mission managers to finalize return planning for the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test currently docked to the orbiting laboratory. Starliner ground teams are taking their time to analyze the results of recent docked hot-fire testing, finalize flight rationale for the spacecraft’s integrated propulsion system, and confirm system reliability ahead of Starliner’s return to Earth.”
Boeing said it “remains confident in the Starliner spacecraft and its ability to return safely with crew. We continue to support NASA’s requests for additional testing, data, analysis, and reviews to affirm the spacecraft’s safe undocking and landing capabilities.”
While the need for engineers to take time to analyze test data is understandable, the delays are beginning to cause issues elsewhere. One space agency source told The Register that more delays to SpaceX’s resupply mission could cause problems further down the line should payloads not arrive when needed. ®
