Enlarge / Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft atop its Atlas V rocket on the launch pad earlier this month. (credit score: NASA/Joel Kowsky)
Senior managers from NASA and Boeing advised reporters on Friday that they plan to launch the primary crew check flight of the Starliner spacecraft as quickly as June 1, following a number of weeks of detailed evaluation of a helium leak and a “design vulnerability” with the ship’s propulsion system.
Intensive information evaluations during the last two-and-a-half weeks settled on a possible explanation for the leak, which officers described as small and secure. Throughout these evaluations, engineers additionally constructed confidence that even when the leak worsened, it will not add any unacceptable danger for the Starliner check flight to the Worldwide Area Station, officers stated.
However engineers additionally discovered that an unlikely mixture of technical failures in Starliner’s propulsion system—representing 0.77 % of all doable failure modes, in response to Boeing’s program supervisor—may stop the spacecraft from conducting a deorbit burn on the finish of the mission.
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