Today's launch is scheduled for 01:54 Moscow time, the spacecraft will use the Atlas V rocket, and the launchPass the Cape
Atlas V rocket with two solid propellantboosters will deliver Starliner to an altitude of 181 km, after which the spacecraft will enter the orbital trajectory. This will be the 93rd launch of the rocket manufactured by United Launch Alliance.
As part of its contract with NASA with a fixedAt a price (the space agency is paying Boeing about $5.1 billion to develop a crew-delivery system to the space station), the company agreed to repeat the demonstration flight. Boeing thought it was ready for this re-flight last August, but hours before launch, more than a dozen valves in the Starliner's propulsion system jammed. The attempt was cancelled, so Boeing was never able to test its modified programming code.
Since August, Boeing and NASA have been working tosolve to understand the problem with the valves, which turned out to be related to the humidity of the environment, which caused corrosion inside the valves. The engineers then implemented the fixes. Because of this additional delay, Boeing incurred a $600 million loss to fly a second demonstration mission, known as Orbital Flight Test-2.
The space agency wants to have an alternativeway to get to the space station. It is confident in the capabilities of the SpaceX Crew Dragon, for which NASA paid $3.1 billion. But due to uncertainty in relations with Russia, the space agency can no longer count on access to the Soyuz.
If all goes well, the Starliner manned flight will take place in the first half of 2023.
Recall that during a test flight in December 2019, Boeing had a lot of problems with the software, and Starliner did not have enough fuel to rendezvous with the space station.
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