Next Starliner Mission Scheduled for March 2021 Written 11 December 2020
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Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft mounted atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. | Frank Michaux; NASA
SPACE reports that The Boeing Company and NASA announced Wednesday that the first ISS mission for the Boeing CST-100 Starliner capsule is scheduled for March 29, 2021. This is the second time Boeing and NASA are attempting to send the Starliner to the ISS after the first attempt, in December 2019, “suffered a glitch with its onboard timing system, got stranded in the wrong orbit and came back down to Earth without achieving the planned rendezvous.” The team working on the upcoming uncrewed mission, dubbed Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2), has been working to fix software issues with the capsule that led to the OFT-1 mission’s failed rendezvous attempt. If OFT-2 “is successful, a crewed test flight to the orbiting lab will follow, potentially in the summer of 2021. Starliner would then be clear to begin flying operational crewed missions.”
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