In the morning of May 19, Beijing time, NASA astronauts and officials said on Wednesday that the Boeing starliner spacecraft was ready for an unmanned launch to the international space station this week. The test mission has been postponed for a long time. Its purpose is to prove that Boeing has the ability to carry out manned space flight safely.
Boeing's CST-100 starliner spacecraft is a gum shaped manned spacecraft, but it has experienced many setbacks in recent years. In 2019, software failure caused the spacecraft to fail in its first attempt to dock with the space station. Last year, the fuel valve problem led to a nine month delay in the plan.
On Thursday afternoon local time, the starliner spacecraft will try again at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to launch to the space station without manned. Boeing urgently needs to succeed in the aerospace field to help get rid of the continuous crises in the aircraft business, as well as the space and defense business.
"If we don't believe this mission will succeed, we won't be here. We're ready, this ship is ready," NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore said in an interview on Wednesday Wilmo is likely to participate in the first manned launch of starliner spacecraft in the future.
"Teams have been preparing for the space flight," said Kathy Lueders, head of NASA's space operations She stressed that starliner's space flight was a test mission. "We have learned a lot from the first unmanned demonstration in 2019. We will also learn from the second test."
Boeing officials said on Tuesday that last year's fuel valve problem prompted Boeing to design a temporary repair plan for this week's mission, and the long-term repair plan will be implemented after the completion of this mission. It was reported last week that this problem led to a contradiction between Boeing and one of starliner's key parts suppliers.
The starliner spacecraft will try to dock with the international space station on Friday, stay for four to five days and return to earth. If everything goes according to plan, starliner may launch its first manned launch in the autumn. However, NASA officials warned that the plan could still be delayed.
NASA currently has 44 active astronauts. Butch and another astronaut, Mike Fincke, had previously been assigned to participate in the subsequent manned launch. However, NASA officials are reluctant to bind the two astronauts to an uncertain launch mission. They said on Wednesday that four astronauts had received starliner test flight training, and at least two of them would participate in the test flight.
After the failure in 2019, starliner's plan delays and engineering problems caused Boeing to incur a cost of $595 million. The spacecraft was developed under a $4.5 billion fixed price contract with NASA. The project hopes that Boeing and its competitor SpaceX will provide NASA with two ways to go to the international space station.