An independent review team has come up with 61 findings and corrective actions after the uncrewed Boeing Starliner spacecraft failed to reach the International Space Station as planned in December.
NASA is calling the Starliner flight a “high visibility close call,” saying there was a point in its flight when the spacecraft could have been lost.
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In a teleconference update on Friday, NASA and Boeing shared the outcome of the investigation by a join independent review team into the Starliner’s flawed flight test, which was supposed to demonstrate the spacecraft’s readiness to carry a crew.
Crews are going to work through the correction actions “over the next several months in order to make sure that when we decide to fly again, we can fly safely," said Douglas Loverro, associate administrator of NASA’s Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.
The review team concentrated on some key areas, including software errors and an intermittent communication problem between the spacecraft and teams on the ground.
“One of the first steps we have to do is an audit from the software requirements through the testing that was performed to qualify that software,” said John Mulholland, vice president and manager of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner program.
From there, the team will fix the issues and determine why they weren’t caught.
“I think the key takeaway is that they’re doing everything they can to ensure this is a safe spacecraft and we can get astronauts to the ISS safely," said Sara Shell with Space Florida.
The corrective action is likely to take months.
Officials said these findings are not likely to impact NASA’s other commercial-crew partner, SpaceX, which is hoping to fly a manned flight test to the ISS in the next few months.
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