Space schedule: Nasa fixes its Moon rocket, Boeing prepares for Starliner test

Nasa will work on fixing problems with its Moon rocket while prepaing to bring Crew-3 astronauts home from space, and to send the Boeing Starliner there

Technicians add panels to the Boeing Starliner spacecraft at Kennedy Space Center ahead of an Orbital test flight scheduled for May

(Boeing/John Proferes)

With the safe return to Earth of the first all-private mission to the International Space Station, Axiom-1, on Monday 25 April, and the successful launch of Nasa’s Crew-4 mission on Wednesday 27 April, many of the next major events in space are in a holding pattern. Nasa’s big Moonrocket is back indoors for repairs after several weeks on the launch pad for testing, for instance, while Boeing and Nasa prepare for a flight test of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft in mid-May.

Read below for more on what’s next in space in the coming weeks.

Crew-3 returns home — Late April

Nasa hasn’t set an official date yet, but the space agency has previously indicated the four astronauts of the Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station would return to Earth sometime after the Crew-4 mission arrived on the space station. The Crew-3 astronauts — Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron of Nasa, and Matthias Maurer of the European Space Agency — have lived on the ISS since November.

After their successors in the Crew-4 mission successfully launched on Wednesday morning, the path has been cleared for the Crew-3 astronauts to return home later this month.

Boeing’s Orbital Flight Test 2 – 19 May

Crew-3 and Crew-4 flew to the ISS aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and atop SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets. That’s because since 2020, SpaceX has been the only commercial operating approved to fly astronauts as part of Nasa’s Commercial Crew program.

Nasa originally awarded two companies contracts for its commercial crew program, SpaceX, and Boeing. But while SpaceX began regular service with Crew Dragon in 2020, Boeing’s Strainer spacecraft ran into a computer glitch during its 2019 orbital test flight that prevented the uncrewed spacecraft from docking with the space station.

A second shot at that test flight, a mission enumerated as OFT-2, was further delayed in August, but is now scheduled for no earlier than Thursday 19 May.

The Starliner will launch from launch complex 41 at Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. Nasa officials, including administrator Bill Nelson, have repeatedly said that hardware redundancy, a second ride to the ISS using different technology than SpaceX has so far, is important to the space agency.

A media teleconference on OFT-2 with Nasa officials and the media will stream on Nasa’s website at 11am EDT Tuesday 3 May.

Nasa’s Moon rocket test flight — August, maybe

As recently as early April, Nasa officials were still discussing launch windows in May, June and July for the first test flight of its Space Launch System (SLS) Moon rocket and Orion spacecraft.

But after three aborted attempts to complete a crucial launchpad fueling test known as a wet dress rehearsal since 17 March, Nasa rolled the rolled the 322-foot-tall rocket back into Vehicle Assembly Building on Tuesday 26 April and readjusted expectations. During a media call Tuesday morning, Nasa assistant administrator Bob Cabana suggested making a SLS test flight by sometime August would be a schedulethe space agency would have to work hard for at this point.

SLS and Orion together form the core of Nasa’s Artemis Moon program. Artemis I, an uncrewed test flight of both vehicles, must take place before Artemis II, a crewed lunar flyby scheduled for May 2024, and Artemis III, a mission to return humans to the lunar surface scheduled for 2025.