Space News by Jeff Foust 4/6/2018
A commercial crew contract modification moves NASA one step closer to using a test flight as an operational mission to maintain a presence on the International Space Station.
NASA announced April 5 that it had updated its Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract with Boeing to study potential changes to the second of two test flights of the company’s CST-100 Starliner vehicle, currently intended to carry two people on a short-duration mission to the station.
Those changes, NASA said, would involve adding a third crewmember to flight and extending its mission from two weeks to as long as six months, the typical length of an astronaut’s stay on the ISS. The changes would involve training and mission support for that third crewmember and the potential to fly cargo on both that mission and an earlier uncrewed test flight.
NASA said in the statement that adding the third astronaut, and extending the mission’s stay, could “could allow for additional microgravity research, maintenance, and other activities†while at the station. The agency acknowledged, though, that it could also be used to maintain a U.S. presence on the station should the development of both Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicles experience more delays.
More:
http://spacenews.com/nasa-studies-extending-boeing-commercial-crew-test-flight-to-support-iss/
