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Starliner isn’t yet ready for a crew. Just a few weeks before the Boeing-built capsule was scheduled to deliver its first passengers to the ISS, NASA and Boeing leaders announced that two major issues with the craft will delay the first crewed mission even longer. High Temperature
The announcement follows a review by NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel last week, which warned against rushing into a crewed flight before all of Starliner’s potential safety concerns could be thoroughly investigated and addressed.
The issues: In reviews late last week, the Boeing team identified two issues with the Starliner craft that could cause disaster in certain flight scenarios:
Looking back: Boeing and SpaceX were selected at the same time in 2014 to build commercial crew transport vehicles to send astronauts to the ISS. Neither vehicle met the original target of flying in 2017, but SpaceX beat Boeing to the punch, launching its first crewed mission in 2020 (and nine others since).
Boeing has met many of the milestones for its $4.2B fixed-price contract already, having flown two test flights of Starliner so far.
Looking forward: Starliner won’t fly in July as previously planned. Boeing is spending this week figuring out exactly what needs to be done to get Starliner ready to fly again. The capsule will likely need to complete additional test flights before it can fly a crew. Boeing VP and program manager Mark Nappi declined to provide a timeline for the capsule’s first crewed mission until the team has completed its review.
Kuva Space raised a €16.6M ($17.6M) Series A to accelerate camera development, support constellation deployment, and expand to the US, the Finnish hyperspectral satellite startup announced today. “This is significant for the next phase of the company, which is to build the capability to add value to customers,” Kuva chief Jarkko Antila told Payload. The […]
Delta is tapping into satellite internet. This morning, the airline giant announced a partnership with Hughes to add antennas to 400+ planes to connect customers with the broadband provider’s JUPITER satellite network. “Travelers expect a reliable Wi-Fi experience wherever they go, including in the air,” Reza Rasoulian, Hughes VP of broadband satellite services, said in […]
Amazon is teaming up with a handful of leading think tanks to launch the Alliance for Satellite Broadband, a coalition aiming to broaden global satellite internet access. The group was just announced yesterday, but it already has its first task: pushing regulators to update decades-old limits on signal interference between different orbits. EPFD 101: Equivalent […]
The Space Development Agency (SDA) has tapped the providers to build its next batch of satellites.
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