WASHINGTON \u2014 Boeing is still working with NASA to determine when to fly its CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle on a cargo mission to the International Space Station.<\/p>\n
In an earnings call July 28 to discuss the company\u2019s second-quarter financial results, Kelly Ortberg, president and chief executive of Boeing, described Starliner as the last of a set of fixed-price contracts in the company\u2019s defense and space unit that the company is working to get on track after cost overruns.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe one program we have work yet to do with the customer on is commercial crew, or the Starliner program,\u201d he said after discussing work on several military aircraft and drone programs.<\/p>\n
Starliner has not flown since the Crew Flight Test mission two years ago, which suffered thruster malfunctions and helium leaks. NASA elected to bring the spacecraft back uncrewed, with the two NASA astronauts who traveled to the International Space Station on that spacecraft remaining in space for nine months before returning on a SpaceX Crew Dragon.<\/p>\n
Boeing has been working to resolve those problems but has provided few major updates on those efforts. \u201cThe redesign of the Starliner deficiencies is going quite well. We\u2019re feeling pretty good about that,\u201d Ortberg said during the call.<\/p>\n
However, at a June 22 meeting of NASA\u2019s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, committee members said work to address those problems was still ongoing<\/a>. They stated that it could take up to a year for the vehicle to fly again on Starliner-1, a cargo-only mission that will effectively be another test flight of the spacecraft.<\/p>\n Ortberg suggested it was primarily a matter of scheduling the mission with NASA. \u201cAs NASA\u2019s replanning their launch sequence, that\u2019ll have some impact to when we\u2019re actually doing the launch,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to work with NASA to align on when the launches are going to be, both the crewed and uncrewed launches, going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n At a briefing in May, a NASA official said launch opportunities for Starliner-1 remained under review<\/a> after the mission was not included in a schedule of cargo and crew missions to the ISS planned through late this year. \u201cOur schedule is pretty busy, but we\u2019re trying to maintain windows where we can go fly that,\u201d said Bill Spetch, NASA ISS operations and integration manager.<\/p>\n