Boeing Starliner finally moves near launch pad for crucial test flight

Spacecraft will eventually transport Nasa astronauts to and from International Space Station

The Boeing Starliner is prepared to mounting on a rocket ahead of a 19 May flight test (Nasa)

The Boeing-made Starliner spacecraft finally rolled near the launchpad to be mounted atop a rocket in preparation for a second shot at a crucial flight test the spacecraft failed in 2020.

Orbital Flight Test 2, or OFT-2, is scheduled to lift off from launch complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida no earlier than May 19.

Unlike the Crew Dragon spacecraft of Boeing competitor SpaceX, the Starliner will fly to orbit atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. Boeing moved the spacecraft to the vertical integration facility near the launch complex Wednesday in order to mate spacecraft and launch vehicle.

Boeing hopes to use the Starliner to fly Nasa astronauts to and from the International Space Station, just as SpaceX has since 2020. Both companies won contracts from Nasa to do so as part of the space agency’s Commercial Crew program, though Boeing won the bigger contract, worth $4.3 billion to SpaceX’s $2.5 billion.

But while 2020 saw SpaceX begin servicing Nasa as per their contract, Boeing saw on-orbit failure. A computer glitch during an uncrewed orbital test of the Starliner in December kept the spacecraft from docking with the ISS, though the vehicle did successfully land in the New Mexico desert — a contrast with Crew Dragon that lands in the ocean off the Florida coast.

Boeing and Nasa hoped the Starliner could try again in August, but problems with an oxidizer valve on the spacecraft put OFT-2 on hold.

Boeing will now, finally, get their second chance.

If all goes well on 19 May, Boeing and Nasa will then decide on a date for the first crewed flight test for the Starliner, bringing the space agency one step closer to the redundancy it hoped to purchase in awarding two Commercial Crew contracts.

Nasa has been reliant on one spacecraft to reach the ISS before, the Space Shuttle. When Nasa retired the shuttle 2011, Nasa astronauts’ only ride to space was aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, a situation that would be untenable today given the tensions between Russian and the west over the former’s invasion of Ukraine.