spacetoday.net: First Starliner crewed flight slips to July

Posted: Sat, Apr 1, 2023, 11:41 AM ET (1541 GMT)
CST-100 Starliner on pad for OFT launch (ULA)

NASA and Boeing have delayed the first crewed flight of the CST-100 Starliner to late July. At a briefing Wednesday, NASA announced the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, previously scheduled to launch by the end of April, will instead be delayed to no earlier than July 21. NASA and Boeing officials said it has taken longer than expected to complete certification reviews of Starliner's parachutes, but added there were no issues with the parachutes. Engineers will use the extra time to perform additional tests of Starliner electronics after finding a "logic error" in one unit during a recent test. At the same briefing, NASA stated it was looking into reports that the uncrewed Soyuz MS-22 that returned to Earth on Tuesday had internal temperatures as high as 50 degrees Celsius, saying they needed two to three weeks to coordinate with Russian colleagues on data from that damaged spacecraft's return.