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Boeing’s Starliner capsule lands in White Sands, New Mexico on Could 25, 2022 to finish the OFT-2 mission.
NASA TV
Boeing landed its uncrewed Starliner spacecraft within the New Mexico desert on Wednesday, finishing an important check flight as the corporate prepares to hold astronauts.
Starliner landed on the U.S. Military’s White Sands Missile Vary, after earlier within the day leaving the Worldwide Area Station – concluding the six-day Orbital Flight Check 2, or OFT-2 mission.
The mission accomplished considered one of its most essential check aims, reaching the ISS and docking efficiently. OFT-2 marks a essential improvement milestone in Boeing’s improvement of Starliner, which has run into a number of obstacles and delays over the previous three years.
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is seen earlier than docking with the Worldwide Area Station on Could 20, 2022 throughout the uncrewed OFT-2 mission.
NASA
Boeing has been creating its Starliner spacecraft underneath NASA’s Industrial Crew program, having received almost $5 billion in contracts to construct the capsule. The corporate competes underneath this system towards Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which accomplished improvement of its Crew Dragon spacecraft and is now on its fourth operational human spaceflight for NASA.
The aerospace big was as soon as seen as evenly matched with SpaceX within the race to launch NASA astronauts. But the delays to Starliner’s improvement have steadily set Boeing again, each in schedule and funds. As a result of fixed-price nature of its NASA contract, Boeing absorbed the price of extra work on the capsule and has spent $595 million to date.
Boeing’s subsequent Starliner mission is predicted to be the Crew Flight Check, or CFT, flying the primary astronauts onboard the capsule. Nevertheless, the corporate is inspecting whether or not to revamp the Aerojet Rocketdyne-made propulsion valves on Starliner, which malfunctioned throughout the firm’s first try and launch the OFT-2 mission in August 2021.
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