Space News by Jeff Foust — June 21, 2019
A new Government Accountability Office report called on NASA to develop a contingency plan to maintain access to the station after next September should commercial crew vehicles suffer additional delays.
The June 20 report by the GAO noted that both Boeing and SpaceX are making progress on the development of their commercial crew vehicles, including an uncrewed test flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft in March. But a number of technical issues, coupled with a history of delays, didn’t give the organization confidence the companies would be able to maintain their current schedules.
“Both contractors have made progress building and testing hardware, including SpaceX’s uncrewed test flight,†the report stated. “But continued schedule delays and remaining work for the contractors and the program create continued uncertainty about when either contractor will be certified to begin conducting operational missions to the ISS.â€
The report outlined the technical challenges both companies face to complete the development of their vehicles, topics that have also been discussed at recent meetings of the NASA Advisory Council and the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel. For Boeing, that includes ongoing work to qualify the CST-100 Starliner’s parachute system while addressing an issue discovered during a parachute test last August. Another issue is an anomaly during an unidentified 2018 launch of the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5, the vehicle that will launch Starliner, where the engine position “deviated from commands†but did not affect the outcome of the mission.
More:
https://spacenews.com/gao-recommends-nasa-develop-contingency-plan-for-iss-access-amid-commercial-crew-delays/
