Olivia Cavallaro Science 08.26.2022 00:Aug AM EDT

Boeing Starliner's First Astronaut Mission for NASA Has Been Delayed

The launch of the Boeing Starliner mission has been pushed back to early 2023.

Boeing's first astronaut mission for NASA on the Starliner capsule has been rescheduled from December this year to February 2023. The two companies confirmed the decision to move the flight to a later date on Thursday.

Originally, NASA planned to launch the Crew Flight Test (CFT), which was the first-ever crewed mission of the Boeing Starliner toward the International Space Station (ISS) in December. However, scientists required more time to fix the issues that surfaced during the Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2), an uncrewed mission to the ISS that Boeing's Starliner made back in May, Space.com reported.

NASA's Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich confirmed to reporters during a call, "Currently, we're targeting a launch date as early as February of 2023."

Boeing and NASA to Work on 'Issues' in Starliner's Test Flight

Engineers are now hard at work to correct issues that arose during the Boeing Starliner's test flight in March, including the failure of a few onboard thrusters during the spacecraft's launch to orbit. Starliner's Mark Nappi attributed these issues to debris, Reuters reported.

Nappi explained that after NASA approves Boeing's fixes on the thruster issues, the crewed Boeing Starliner capsule will be integrated with its Atlas 5 rocket in November. The Atlas 5 launch vehicle was built by both Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

The upcoming mission on the Boeing Starliner will span eight days and will bring NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams to the ISS and back.This will be the final test mission before NASA certifies the Boeing Starliner for routine astronaut missions.

Upon certification, the Boeing Starliner will become NASA's second mode of transportation for astronauts who need to go to the ISS, alongside the Crew Dragon spacecraft built by Elon Musk's SpaceX, which earned its certification in 2020.

NASA Set for a Busy 2023 Flight Schedule

Boeing is locked into a $4.5 billion fixed-price contract with NASA for the development of its Starliner aircraft and six routine missions upon its certification. Changes in the engineering and the process of addressing issues that arose from the Boeing Starliner's test mission in March cost the company up to $93 million, the company said in July. To date, Boeing has listed up to $688 million in charges since the Starliner's test failures in 2019.

But NASA will continue to keep busy with a number of launches in early 2023, with three other crewed missions launching to orbit the lab. The schedule includes NASA's flight on board SpaceX's Crew-6, an Ax-2 mission for Axiom Space, a Russian Soyuz flight, and two robotic resupply launches.

SpaceX has been far ahead of Boeing in terms of its services with NASA. SpaceX has already gone ahead and launched four operational crewed missions to the ISS using its Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket.

But SpaceX's next astronaut launch for NASA has also seen a small delay of four days, from its original launch date of September 29 to October 3. NASA said that the small delay of the Crew-5 mission to the ISS would "[allow] for extra separation with spacecraft traffic coming to and from the space station" and is unrelated to any performance issues of the SpaceX spacecraft.