NASA’s Steve Stich Gives Quick Starliner Update

During the NASA Administrator Briefing from the Kennedy Space Center mainly centered around Crew-8 readiness today, Steve Stich, the Manager of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program gave some insight about the status of the planned first crewed flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner. That launch is currently planned for late April of this year.

On the Starliner capsule’s readiness, Stich said “Over at Boeing the Starliner spacecraft is pretty much closed out. We’ve loaded the fluid for the cooling system. The next big event, really, is to load propellant on the crew module and propellant in the service module. And that’ll happen in mid-March.”

And we’re going to work hand in hand with Joel [Montalbano, manager, International Space Station Program] on the right decision points to go fuel Starliner. As Joel said, it’s a busy time, so we may adjust the date. Right now, we’re targeting the Crew Flight test in late April.”

Stich also mentioned that the launch date for Starliner may be affected by the availability of a docking port, so the late April date appears that it may still be somewhat fluid. The good news for Boeing is that the spacecraft appears to be in good condition to fly, pending additional flight readiness reviews.

ULA Stacking Atlas-V for Starliner at SLC-41

On a post on the X platform yesterday, NASA Commercial Crew said ” A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket was moved into the company’s Vertical Integration Facility to start stacking operations ahead of the first crewed Starliner launch to [the International] Space Station.”

If The Crew Flight Test Is Successful?

Stich said that there are effectively two crews training for Starliner flights: “We really have two crews, primarily in training,” he said. “Barry Wilmore and  Sunita Williams, for CFT. Mike Finke is the backup astronaut for that flight.”

Stich did not identify an additional astronaut who would be training for Starliner One, the first operational mission of the CST-100 Starliner system. He did, however, outline post-CFT plans for the Starliner system. “Our plan is to really watch the progress of how Starliner One is progressing with the hardware build and the certification products,” he said.

“Just like we did for [SpaceX Crew Dragon] Demo-2, to get to our [Starliner] Crew One flight,” Stich added, “We have a certification process that we go through after that test flight to get to the first Starliner mission. We’ll do that toward the end of this year.”

Assuming all goes well for the Starliner CFT mission, Stich said that, “The Starliner One mission is scheduled for February of 2025.”

Editor’s Note: this story was originally published at Talk of Titusville and is reposted here by permission.