NASA and Boeing will provide an update about the Starliner capsule’s ongoing astronaut mission today (July 24), and you can watch it live.
The mission, called Crew Flight Test (CFT), launched on June 5, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams toward the International Space Station (ISS) for a planned weeklong stay.
Starliner suffered thruster problems and helium leaks during its journey to the orbiting lab, however, and the capsule remains docked to the ISS while mission team members look into the issues.
We’ll get the latest information during today’s press conference, which starts at 11:30 a.m. EDT (1530 GMT). You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA.
The press conference will have two participants: Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, and Mark Nappi, vice president and manager of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program.
Related: Boeing’s Starliner can stay in space beyond 45-day limit, NASA says
NASA and Boeing engineers recently wrapped up some hot-fire testing with a Starliner thruster at the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico — work that will be discussed during today’s briefing.
“The test series involved firing the engine through similar in-flight conditions the spacecraft experienced during its approach to the space station, as well as various stress-case firings for what is expected during Starliner’s undocking and the deorbit burn that will position the spacecraft for a landing in the southwestern United States,” NASA officials said in a statement.
NASA and Boeing have not yet announced a target undocking date for CFT, which is Starliner’s first crewed flight.
Boeing developed Starliner under a multibillion-dollar contract awarded by NASA’s Commercial Crew Program in 2014.
SpaceX inked a similar deal at that time, for work on a crewed variant of its Dragon capsule. Elon Musk‘s company launched astronauts to the ISS for the first time in May 2020, on a test flight known as Demo-2. SpaceX is now in the middle of its eighth operational, long-duration crewed mission to the orbiting lab for NASA.
