WASHINGTON — The chair of a NASA safety panel urged the agency to not rush right into a crewed test flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner vehicle, calling for an independent “deep look” at technical issues with the spacecraft.
Speaking at a May 25 public meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, Patricia Sanders, chair of the committee, expressed skepticism that NASA and Boeing will have the option to shut known issues with Starliner in time for a launch currently scheduled for as soon as July 21.
“There stays an extended line of NASA processes still ahead to find out launch readiness” for the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, the primary crewed flight of the spacecraft with two NASA astronauts on board. “That shouldn’t be flown until safety risks can either be mitigated or accepted, eyes wide open, with an appropriately compelling technical rationale.”
She noted the projected launch date, but added it was simply an “opportunity within the launch schedule” and manifest of planned missions to the station. The present launch date for CFT would fit between a cargo Dragon mission, slated to depart the ISS in early July, and the Crew-7 Crew Dragon mission planned for launch in mid-August. That date, she said, is “not necessarily an acknowledgment of readiness to conduct that flight test.”
When NASA and Boeing announced March 29 the July launch date for CFT, a three-month slip, officials said it could give them more time to finish certification of the spacecraft, notably its parachutes. The delay would also allow them to envision avionics systems within the spacecraft after finding a logic error in a single unit.
Parachute certification stays a “pacing item” for the launch, Sanders said, but additionally brought up several other issues, a few of which she said were only recently revealed through evaluation of knowledge products as a part of the certification process. She mentioned specific open risks of ongoing integrated software testing in addition to battery sidewall rupture concerns, a risk accepted “for the interim only.”
“It’s imperative that NASA not succumb to pressure, even unconsciously, to get CFT launched without adequately addressing all of the remaining impediments to certification,” she said, adding that any decision to just accept risk for the short-duration CFT flight shouldn’t justify accepting it for later operational flights lasting as much as six months.
“Given the variety of remaining challenges to certification of Starliner, we strongly encourage NASA to step back and take a measured have a look at the remaining body of labor with respect to flying CFT,” she concluded, arguing that the agency should herald an independent team, akin to from the NASA Engineering and Safety Center, “to take a deep have a look at the items on the trail to closure.”
Neither Boeing nor NASA have provided many updates on the status of preparations for the CFT mission. A Boeing website dedicated to Starliner updates was last updated with the March announcement of the brand new July launch date.
At a May 16 meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s human exploration and operations committee, Phil McAlister, director of the industrial space division in NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, reiterated the planned CFT launch date of no sooner than July 21. “We’ve made plenty of good progress over the past three or 4 months on the hardware. I believe the hardware is in good condition,” he said.
Nevertheless, he said that certification work continued on the vehicle and was the pacing item for CFT. Parachute verification was the “long pole” in completing that work, with more parachute testing planned before the mission. “That would potentially affect the date of the flight,” he said. “At this point, if the tests go nominally, we should always have loads of time to make the July 21 date. But, you never know. That’s why we do these tests.”
