NASA, Boeing target early 2023 for Starliner's long-awaited Crew Flight Test

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Boeing is targeting 2023 for the final test flight of the company's Starliner crew transportation capsule. Senior officials with NASA and Boeing told reporters Thursday that the Crew Flight Test (CFT), originally slated for the end of this year, would be pushed back to at least February.

The flight test will be the first time that Boeing sends NASA astronauts to space aboard its Starliner capsule after a multi-year-long delay and repeated uncrewed test flights.

Originally hoped to occur by year's end, the Crew Flight Test was pushed back by five weeks to accommodate a busy schedule of traffic at the International Space Station. The timeline shift also allows for more processing time to correct some issues with spacecraft thrusters that arose during the uncrewed Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2) in May.

Mark Nappi, Boeing Starliner program manager, explained that an analysis conducted after OFT-2 found that debris caused the thruster issues. But as Nappi explained, "we don't get that hardware back so we will never know exactly what was the issue." The service module portion of the capsule that contains the thrusters is discarded to shed weight prior to re-entry and landing.

But Nappi assured reporters that Boeing has "done all the inspections required on CFT to make sure that that same condition doesn't exist and we're ready to move towards the flight."

The Starliner is expected to be joined to its service module sometime in November at Boeing's Starliner factory at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Steve Stich, NASA manager of the Commercial Crew Program, also explained that fall will bring a final integrated test of the CFT Starliner before a launch attempt in February.

The two NASA astronaut test pilots assigned to CFT, Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore will "check it out with the suits and the seats and the integrated ecosystem," said Stich.

The capsule will then be mated with a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket before it is rolled to the LC-41 launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Due to many crew and cargo flights to the space station during the first six weeks of 2023, Starliner's CFT is planned to be a short-duration mission. After the docking with the space station Williams and Wilmore are expected to stay in space for about eight days.

NASA's Joel Montalbano, manager of the International Space Station program, assured however that "when these guys are ready in February, we'll be making sure there's room for them. They will be high priority unless we're working on a major issue on board (the) space station."

After the docking with the space station Williams and Wilmore are expected to stay in space for about eight days. Starliner will then come home for a landing at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico.

For the latest, visit floridatoday.com/launchschedule.

Jamie Groh is a space reporter for Florida Today. You can contact her at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @AlteredJamie.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Boeing Starliner CFT astronaut flight test scheduled for early 2023