This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy.

Officials from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Boeing have provided updates on the upcoming crewed test flight of the Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS). Starliner is part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP), which contracts with two companies, Boeing and SpaceX, to take astronauts to the ISS. The spacecraft is currently scheduled to fly two astronauts to the space station in April, and the launch will be carefully balanced with an upcoming SpaceX crewed launch to ISS, another cargo launch and the return of Crew-5 currently present on the ISS. However, before Starliner can launch, NASA and Boeing will have to finish some more work on its thrusters.

NASA, Boeing Planning For April Launch Of Crewed Starliner Flight To ISS

In a surprise teleconference held earlier today, NASA and Boeing representatives provided an update about the upcoming Starliner flight. So far, the pair are aiming at an April launch of the crewed mission, as the spacecraft has faced several delays as it heads towards its first crewed mission. Starliner's second orbital test flight saw its thrusters develop problems as it approached the ISS, but Boeing was able to mitigate the issue by using the thrusters designed to orient the ship to dock with the ISS.

These thrusters, called the Orbital Maneuvering and Attitude Control (OMAC) thrusters, are currently the only major item left on Boeing and NASA's check list before the duo can confidently proceed with the crewed flight. The thrusters are installed in the ship's service module, which separates from it before it returns. During the teleconference, NASA' Steve Stich explained that the agency is currently preparing reports for a series of tests it has been running to ensure that the ship can successfully complete its mission. Theese reports will then allow the agency and Boeing to load Starliner with the propellant necessary for its journey.

Boeing's Starliner sits on top of the United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida in July 2021. Image: Boeing/John Grant

Boeing's Mark Nappi, who is responsible for the Starliner program, shared more details about the OMAC and what's left before the flight as he explained that:

There's really only one big item that we have not closed out, and it's planned on the end of this month, beginning of March. And that is the OMAC failure that we had with the OMACs. We had a rationale, remember now we don't get the service module back, so we put together a very extensive fault tree to make sure that we went through every possible scenario, every possible fault that could have caused what we saw in flight. And since we don't get the hardware back, we have to go back to the most probable. And when we got down close to closing that fault tree we recongnized with NASA that we wanted to do a little bit of additional testing. So we ran that testing in February. We've gotten that result back, and we are working with NASA to make sure that we both agree that. . .that box in the fault tree can be closed. We'll bring that back to a board here in the beginning of March and make those decisions. But that's really the only significant one that we have left. We have a number of very small ones that they all have solutions that's really just a matter of getting them to the board and getting them closed.

Mr. Stich shared more details about the thruster problems and other issues that Boeing and NASA have resolved, sharing that:

I would echo what Mark said. We talked I think we had sort of six that we sort of highlighted before we talked. And five of those six are closed. And the one that's a little more problematic is the one that Mark talked about with the OMAC thrusters; because, again, we don't get that service module back. And so as he said we had to do a little bit more testing to convince ourselves that we had the failure mode right and we should work through that here in the March timeframe and get that behind us.

One of the ones that we did close out, that we're already sor of seeing the fruits of is, you know we had the coolant loop freeze up in the radiator and you know Mark and his team have worked several modifications to the vehicle to improve the system and also some improvement on the loading of that fluid with is called Galden which is underway as the vehicle is in the hazardous process area to get it ready for integrated testing. so there's a drying system that dries out that coolant and then some improvements to make sure we don't have that same problem. And so, sort of evidence to me of us working together as a team, making improvements to the vehicle. There's numerous improvements to the flight software, as well on some of the other IFAs that we saw on flight. And we've made those and tested those at the hardware, software simulated lab we call ASIL, and those have checked out well.

Shold the flight be successful, then the next mission which will be Starliner's first operational mission is currently planned for next year. This mission, should it launch and successfully dock with the ISS, will last for a little over a week.