NASA, Boeing Complete Starliner Orbital Flight Test Review

A joint NASA-Boeing independent review team has completed its evaluation of three anomalies that occurred during the December 2019 orbital flight test of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner crew capsule. During the uncrewed test, the Starliner team ran into intermittent space-to-ground communication issues and two software coding errors that resulted in the capsule failing to make it to its intended orbit. According to NASA, the review identified a total of 80 recommendations that Boeing is addressing in collaboration with the agency.

“NASA and Boeing have completed a tremendous amount of work reviewing the issues experienced during the uncrewed flight test of Starliner,” said associate administrator at NASA Steve Jurczyk. “Ultimately, everything we’ve found will help us improve as we move forward in the development and testing of Starliner, and in our future work with commercial industry as a whole.”

Although the Starliner capsule did not dock at the International Space Station (ISS) as intended, it remained in orbit for two days before making a successful landing at New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range. Boeing announced in April that it planned to refly the test “at no cost to the taxpayer.” A launch date for Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) has not yet been set.